A new feature introduced today by Google lets users quickly preview forum discussions within search results.
The new feature will apply to sites that have a large number of relevant posts for a user's search query. Users will see the topic of the thread, the number of posts, and the date the thread was posted.


According to Google's post from director of product management Johanna Wright, "We hope this feature gives you a deeper view into the relevant content available on sites throughout the web - even when that content spans multiple pages or discussions. At the same time, the main search results are diverse as always - so if you can't pinpoint a useful comment there's a list of relevant sites there to help."
The feature seems simple enough, but it's a relevant and welcome addition to Google's search offering and an interesting commentary on the SEO value of forum discussions. In a recent video interview with Vanilla forum software creator Mark O'Sullivan, we chatted in depth on the evergreen nature and value of forum discussions, especially in terms of search.
We can speculate that the Google team might be working on a similar solution for Q&A sites; it would only make sense.
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Never use Google reader before because busying setup my new blog with web 2.0 theme :) Will try out the features that you mentioned.
yea I use this feature and easily found filtered data from google. In this way we can easily search forum discussion and choose our desire solution.
Wow, that would be awesome to search forum posts on google :)
hey guys
thanks for the post its great
btw for EVERTHING in one place, this means buy and sell, HTML tuts, photoshop tuts, movies, music news, gadjets, general chat, sport and topics where you request other topics!
go to http://www.relicah.com/