Matt Cutts Discusses Snippets

First impressions are important, and as people, we prove ourselves with handshakes and “hello”s.  In Google’s search results, websites are represented by a paragraph or so of information, and the company’s own Matt Cutts recently took a few minutes to discuss these snippets.

His video, which was made in Google’s Kirkland offices, delves into the anatomy of a snippet.  Here’s the good news: according to the head of Google’s webspam team, “The majority of the time you have a great deal of control about how things get presented.”  And there really is no bad news.  Cutts just encouraged experimentation as a way of maximizing clicks and conversions.

Cutts noted that, in many cases, Google uses a site’s meta description tag to form its snippet; therefore, changing the tag may be the fastest way to alter a snippet.  At the same time, Cutts stated, “We do try to find the most relevant parts of a page,” so it might be a good idea to poke around