Greetings all,
This weekend I stumbled across this interesting bit of research (done by a
Search Engine Optimization consultant) analyzing the increase in "rich
answers" provided by Google. Rich answers are where Google tries to provide
a full or partial answer to a question without requiring a click to another
website.
The end of the article is concerned with SEO, and the effect different
kinds of rich answers have on website traffic (e.g., partial answers lead
people to your site, full answers don't), but the bulk of the article is a
breakdown of the kinds of rich answers Google provides. The most surprising
to me is that they license song lyrics in order to provide them (without
attribution). Not surprisingly, Wikipedia comes up several times in
screenshots.
Whether you care about SEO or not, it's a nice survey of the kind of rich
answers Google provides:
https://www.stonetemple.com/the-growth-of-rich-answers-in-googles-search-re…
—Trey
Trey Jones
Software Engineer, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation