Anchors Away! Google Now Has Search Results Within Search Results

Screen shot 2009-09-25 at 12.54.03 PMIt’s mildly annoying when I’m searching for something specific and Google returns results that are led by a huge overview page like the ones found on Wikipedia. I usually just use the Cached option to locate the information that I’m looking for, since that highlights the keywords in the resulting page. But now Google has a better option.

A new feature in Google Search results lets you jump right to a specific area on a page. For example, if you’re looking for “good cholesterol level,” Google’s first result is a page entitled “What Your Cholesterol Levels Mean.” The good cholesterol level is a part of that, but further down the page. But now in Google’s results, you will find a “Jump to Your HDL (good) cholesterol level” directly underneath the main result. Clicking on it will take you right to that section on the page.

This idea of being able to jump to specific sections of a page is hardly a new one. Anchor tags have been around forever in HTML to allow you to do this. But previously, Google didn’t pick up on them. Now it apparently is. It’s a small, but nice feature and it will be interesting to see if this leads to a anchor tag resurgence.

And yes, I know the song is “Anchors Aweigh.”

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[photo: flickr/southern comfort]