Google adds anchor links to search results

Web pages have long included anchor links, which, when clicked, send you to a specific section of the page. Wikipedia uses them heavily to help users jump between headings and navigate the sometimes large articles more efficiently. Google has announced that it is now including these anchor links in search results. This is right in line with Google's mission of helping users to find the information that they are looking for as quickly and accurately as possible.

Google calls out the headings (Overview, Requirements, Important reactions, See also) in this Wikipedia article on nuclear fusion.

(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)

For an example of how this works, try searching for "nuclear fusion." As you can see, Google pulls out the headings in the article, so if I was really interested in the requirements for nuclear fusion, I could jump straight there. This is a great addition and really helps in cases where you are dealing with long, text-heavy pages.

If you are a Webmaster and want to set up your Web pages to identify sections to Google, then read this post on Google's Webmaster Central to get you started.

[zxx017]

it's very good!

[uptheironsrafi]

Bing had the same feature since its inception. But then, nobody talked about it. Now Google implements this feature, and all of a sudden its news.
Also, bad choice of website for demonstration. When it comes to Wikipedia, Bing is King.

[t8]

What's Bing?

[uptheironsrafi]

Bing is king. The Bada Bing of search, the place for all the ding ding.

[Philstera]

Google is a bit slow on the uptake I wonder what feature they will steal from Bing next????

[dspohn23]

I wonder how many features bing has already stolen from Google?

[jmitch18]

@dspohn23 that's what happens in competitive business and it benefits all the user's so I wouldn't complain too much.

"Stealing" and improving drives the development of great new functionality.

[dspohn23]

I'm not complaining, just responding to Philstera.

[arnav4u]

Actually, Yahoo has it better than anyone. I mean, along with the above capability, it does have better connectivity with other sites too. Just try it: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=nuclear+fusion

[pennsc]

Some of these people have got to be paid by Google. Let me guess the next major news story will be Google search begins a feature called "Enhanced View" (I just saw it on Bing). They all have strong and weak points.

[vandergl]

weak comments microsoftards. give it up. bing is over

[jmitch18]

How can it possibly be over when its had growth each month since it was released?

[Tony McCune]

This should provide more flexibility and better SEO credit for well designed sites. http://bit.ly/rzryt

[lm_nyc]

Totally agree, this is just a copy of Bing. And Bing also has an "Enhanced View" for Wikipedia pages which puts the Wikipedia anchor tag navigation on the right side in their own frame so it doesn't scroll off the page as you scroll down and read the article.

What's obejctionable here is that the entire context for the story *should* have been "Google plays catch-up with Bing features" and a comparison of the implementation on Bing vs. Google. Instead, we get tripe like "This is right in line with Google's mission of helping users to find the information that they are looking for as quickly and accurately as possible."

So it not only doesn't acknowledge Bing but makes it seem like Google is the innovator in this feature, because after all that's it's mission. So not only is it slightly inaccurate, it's in fact the *opposite* of the truth. That's what makes it especially objectionable. It's Bing that is being the innovator here with it's mission to go "beyond 10 blue links".

[dspohn23]

Because everyone was talking so good about Bing, I thought I would check it out again. I proceeded to recieve an error on the main Bing page. Here's my screenshot. I selected the text on the screen, so that you can see the error messages that were posted. I've never seen an error message on Google ever.

Is this a new Bing Feature? Hopefully Google Doesn't copy this too!

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/7995/bing.jpg

[jmitch18]

@dspohn23 because obviously google has never had any problems..........</sarcasm>

[vntgrg]

Except giving competition BING serves no other purpose.

[Atomic1fire]

I'm pretty Sure I have already seen these links at the bottom of google search results
so no, these are not exactly new.