Eric Enge posted on Google+ a summary of what he published on Search Engine Land on how the answer box on Google is being tested constantly.
Eric said he did a study a few weeks ago on the answer box using 250 queries and then reran it recently and noticed drastic changes, he said:
(1) Many of the queries that previously returned step by step instructions in Google stopped doing so.
(2) Others, that previously returned no answer box started to do so.
Clearly, Google is aware of webmaster hate towards it but is that any influence on these tests? I doubt it, I suspect it is all about the searcher and not where Google "borrows" the answer from.
Check out more of this at SEL.
Eric put it nicely on Google+:
What this demonstrates is that Google is doing a ton of testing in this area. Their drive to build the ultimate knowledge machine is one that will take a long time, but they are all-in with it, and will leverage their current search engine to build it.
Forum discussion at Google+.
