Coming out of SMX Sydney, Google's Gary Illyes supposedly said that the Google Webmaster Tools team is looking to add a way to see data and enable "interactions" with Google Answer results.
I actually suggested this back in November 2014 in my story named How Google Can Screw Publishers Less With Google Answers: A Solution. I said, build in a way into Google Webmaster Tools where publishers can control some of what is displayed in the Google Answers if/when Google picks their content to display in the Google Answer box. Then in February we saw Google test forms of this in play.
Now, supposedly Gary Illyes from Google said at SMX that Google is working on something like this.
Via Jennifer Slegg, both Pete Meyers on Twitter and Reeva on Twitter quote Gary as saying this is coming.
Google is looking to provide data on interactions with answer snippets via GWMT says @methode at #SMX #SMXSydney
— Reeva (@ReevaCutting) May 13, 2015Google is looking to provide data on "web answers" (answer box 2.0) in Google Webmaster Tools #smx
— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) May 13, 2015I think this would be awesome and a good step forward to making publishers less upset with these answer boxes.
Forum discussion at Twitter and Twitter.
Update: Maybe not? I asked Gary for more details, so far only Pete Meyers responded, he was in the audience:
@rustybrick @methode Sorry, it was more of a "We're discussing how best to do this" thing.
— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) May 13, 2015And Gary from Google in his funny way:
@rustybrick @dr_pete We can't confirm our deny whether we quote each other. Sorry. Solo shot first btw
— Gary Illyes (@methode) May 13, 2015