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How is Google Triggering Music Answer Boxes?
We’ve been watching how Google responds to queries with specialized search results after seeing how Google handles some queries by presenting Rich Snippets.
So when we see something like a patent from Google come out that involves specially formatted query results, we pay attention. Part of the reason why has to do with the observations of search engineers about unusual search results in the paper Enhanced Results for Web Search.
If you are doing SEO either for a site you own or as a professional SEO, you should read that white paper if you haven’t yet. It’s very interesting and well worth the time. Markup like that from Schema.org is being increasingly used on pages across the Web.
Recent RDFa Markup Increases mean more rich snippets.
The Purpose of an Answerbox
Searchers often look for an answer to a specific question, rather than a listing of resources. People might want to know what the weather is at a particular location, the definition of a particular word is, how to convert between time zones (something I’ve been facing lately), or the words to a song.
Related Content:
So an answer box is supposed to show an answer to a particular query rather than a list of pages about a particular topic or entity.
The music answer boxes may contain information of some type about a song or music group, and if the word “lyrics” is included, it might just trigger an answer box that does contain lyrics to a song. It appears like this:
Interesting that it tells us “Song by Usher, Justin Bieber” and that those link to search results pages for each
Newsweek revealed to us in December that Google is licensing the appearance of lyrics for songs.
The links to the performers on the songs do have knowledge panels which can include within them actions such as downloading or streaming a song, or connecting to Google Play for the song.
Google may treat knowledge panel entities with different types of actions associated with them as different types of advertisements.
That could mean that instead of the same people trying to bid on a search term such as “Justin Beiber”, it could allow multiple bidders on “Justin Beiber” for “purchasing tickets,” for “streaming of audio and/or video” for downloading audio or video” and so on.
So different auctions for different types of actions would be possible, and that could help increase how much Google earns because it would no longer be limited to specific terms or phrases.
The knowledge panel for Usher that Google shows does provide a way for Google to make money from the display.
Knowledge Panels Versus One Boxes
There have been several patents granted to Google in the past year or so, that involved the inclusion of trigger terms or specialized parameters in queries that we were on the fence about regarding whether or not they would show up at Google, or were going to be replaced by things like Knowledge panels or carousels.
It looks like many of those haven’t shown up at Google yet because Google may be looking for ways to combine answer boxes with knowledge panels as it has with the lyrics answer boxes.
The Google patent related to triggering music answer boxes is:
Triggering music answer boxes relevant to user search queries
Inventors: Ganesh Ramanarayanan, Jun Gong, Murali Krishna Viswanathan, Daphne Dembo, Pravir K. Gupta, Tal Cohen, Lev Finkelstein, Adi Mano, Evan B. Roseman
Assignee: Google Inc.
US Patent 8,788,514
Granted July 22, 2014
Filed: October 28, 2010
Abstract
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for triggering music answer boxes.
In one aspect, a method includes receiving a query, obtaining a plurality of search results responsive to the query, the search results being results from a search of web resources on the Internet, and determining from the plurality of search results that the query is a music query.
Music data for a song responsive to the query is obtained, where the music data comprises a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of song content of the song on the Internet.
A music answer box is generated for the query, where the music answer box comprises the music data and a link to the URL of the song content, and the music answer box is provided in addition to search results.
The triggering music answer box patent is just the tip of the iceberg.
There are a lot of other patent filings at Google involving other types of media, and entities, and specialized knowledge base and knowledge panel information.
We will be expecting those to appear now that we see that Google still has an interest in working with them further as they did with showing lyrics of songs to searchers wanting to find them.
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About Bill Slawski
With more than 26 years of SEO experience and a Juris Doctor Degree, Bill Slawski is the foremost expert on Google’s patents as related to SEO. Patent Exploration is one of the quickest and most detailed ways to find new information about SEO. Bill is the Editor of SEO by the Sea, a prominent search engine optimization blog, where he is the author of over 1,300 posts. Bill’s experience includes Fortune 500 brands and some of the largest websites in the world. Bill is a contributing author for Moz, Search Engine Land, and Search Engine Journal. In 2014-2021, he spoke at industry-leading international conferences about topics including search engine algorithms, universal and blended search, personalization in search, search and social, and duplicate content problems, structured data, and schemaJoin thousands of marketers to get the best search news in under 5 minutes. Get resources, tips and more with The Splash newsletter:
