Google Wants SEOs To Tell Them How They Can Do Better With Search Results Snippets

Danny Sullivan posted a bit of a cryptic tweet last night, asking SEOs how they want the search results listings to appear, what controls they want, things they dislike, etc. He wrote "We're curious about what's top-of-mind in your hopes and dreams about how Google displays listings. More control over titles? Sitelinks? Things we don't do that you'd want? What you'd do with markup or other ways to help?"

I asked Danny for more details on why he is asking:

Why do you ask? :)

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) October 31, 2018

No, I didn't expect an answer. I guess he wants to collect feedback for when he talks to the snippets team about possible improvements there.

Over the years, Google has given and taken controls away from SEOs regarding the snippets. Like removing the sitelinks demotion tool and no longer supporting different meta tags for controlling snippets, such as the NOODP tag and others. And now, Google wants to know how they can improve here.

So go to Twitter and share your ideas, here are some of the ones posted so far:

3. A 'preview' of what snippets might look like for certain keyword in GSC would be nice.

4. More control of site links and brands knowledge panel. What if I want to include my TikTok handle? etc..

5. Reduce the size of the featured snippet on mobile.

— Joe Youngblood (@YoungbloodJoe) October 31, 2018

8. Quit 'forcing' news publishers to use AMP to get traffic from Google News.

9. Bring back the 7 pack map to help SMB's and give users wider variety of options.

10. Use the right-hand side of the screen on desktop / laptop, it's barren over there.

— Joe Youngblood (@YoungbloodJoe) October 31, 2018

Great question!
1. Title + link shown above snippet as you do for regular results - applies to Featured Snippet and People Also Ask
2. Limit snippets to reasonable length e.g. ~150-250 characters per Domain (even if you show double snippets)
3. Improved delineation of paid ads :) pic.twitter.com/XLpZP4GL72

— Cyrus💥 (@CyrusShepard) October 31, 2018

More use and better display of jump links for elements (mainly headers) that use IDs. Example based on this article: https://t.co/JPC9ckdIi5 pic.twitter.com/iKBuqFZjTi

— Jon Henshaw (@henshaw) November 1, 2018

Forum discussion at Twitter.