The Snippets Taxonomy in Web Search Engines

TL;DR

This paper introduces a taxonomy for search result snippets based on analysis of 50,000 Polish Google search results, revealing correlations and characteristics of different snippet types.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new taxonomy for search snippets and provides empirical analysis of their distribution and characteristics in Polish Google search results.

Findings

Rich snippets are less common in commercial keywords.

Many snippets are scholarly articles and rich cards.

Results show correlations between overlapping snippets.

Abstract

In this paper authors analyzed 50 000 keywords results collected from localized Polish Google search engine. We proposed a taxonomy for snippets displayed in search results as regular, rich, news, featured and entity types snippets. We observed some correlations between overlapping snippets in the same keywords. Results show that commercial keywords do not cause results having rich or entity types snippets, whereas keywords resulting with snippets are not commercial nature. We found that significant number of snippets are scholarly articles and rich cards carousel. We conclude our findings with conclusion and research limitations.