Tuesday Tidbit: Google Testing Another Cool New Search Feature

There’s some buzz going around the search marketing community about a feature that Google has started testing for local businesses, tentatively called Posts. Google hasn’t yet named the feature, but their URL for the feature contains “posts”, so that’s what we’re going with!

So, what the heck is Posts? If you’ve done any searching during this campaign season on politicians, you’ve probably seen Posts. Google debuted these new “cards” for politicians. Basically, Google lets politicians post small updates, similar to tweets, straight into Google results. Go ahead, try it out! Open a Google search and type in your favorite (or least favorite) candidate’s name.

You’ll see something like this:

If you click into one of the posts, you’ll be taken to a simple feed page of the candidate’s posts. 

The big news beyond candidates is Google has begun experimenting with Posts for local businesses. This means, for instance, someone could search “web design Minneapolis” and ArcStone would have those content cards show up in the search results.

But hold your horses! As of now, this is just a test. Google provides a waitlist that you can sign up for, but whether or not it’ll ever fully roll out is a question. If it does, though, this would provide a whole new way for local businesses (and maybe brands) to reach consumers.

To read more about Google Posts, check out this article from Search Engine Land.

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