Google Showing Authors, Totals Posts and Last Post Data
Posted on October 9th, 2008by Michael Gray in Google
Haven’t seen this one before a SERP where google is showing Total Authors, last post data, and total number of posts [seo malpractice]
Popularity: 19% [?]
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October 9th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Seems like kind of an odd inclusion really. How many Googlers do you think will have absolutely no clue what “x posts” and “x authors” means?
I really do, however, like the “Last Post” portion of it. Too many times I’ve trusted a forum thread URL for an answer only to find out it’s from 2005
October 9th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
I actually like this info for forum results. The date information could b especially relevant. +1 for click/no-click value.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I think it’s a useful inclusion for Google, I would be interested to know if this was when you were logged into your Igoogle account or Googleling annonymously. I have 1 Igoogle account that has Digg like icons, as I got selected for a bucket test, wonder if this is a wide release?
October 9th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Hmm interesting. Yet another questionable Google test?
October 10th, 2008 at 11:37 am
yeh i noticed this yesterday and blogged it, seems an interesting idea, with google track record of getting dates wrong in their serps be interesting to see how it works out
October 10th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
It’s a very useful addition actually. And as far as I have checked, Google is showing this only for forum posts. In Michael’s example above, you can see that both the results he marked with red arrows are from a forum post. Do any other forum related search (like ’sarah palin environment forum’) to confirm.
Also, I am getting this whether I sign in to Google or not. So it maybe that this will be integrated into all researches.
Means we won’t have to go to the result to find out when the post was active and how many posts there are in that thread. Maybe, Google would also take into account the number of users who posted and the number of posts in that thread as ranking factor (like more posts and more authors can mean a hot,popular thread but not sure, just a wild shot). Anyone observed anything like this?
October 10th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
One more thing I just noticed. Google isn’t showing the year for threads that had a last post in 2008 (current year).
October 16th, 2008 at 12:55 am
My biggest concern would be that, a site may seem out dated even if the piece itself is timeless.
October 16th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Is it accurate? If so, very cool. If not . . . not so cool.
October 18th, 2008 at 3:47 am
Didn’t notice that. It’s definitely useful info instead of wasting time clicking on the link only to find out that it’s an old thread.
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Think they’ll get to where they can tell I interviewed two people and mention that in the SERP?