Last month I wrote about answer passages when Google decides what featured snippet answers to show in response to queries that are asking questions. This was in the post Featured Snippet Answer Scores Ranking Signals. I wrote about an updated patent that clarifies that passages that might be in response to a query use answer scores based on both query-dependent and query-independent signals.

A query-dependent signal includes the relevance of a term in the query to some aspect of candidate featured snippet answers. Query-independent signals don’t rely upon the terms in a query and their relevance to terms in an answer passage. Still, Google could look at other aspects of answers, such as whether an answer uses incomplete sentences or other query-independent aspects answers.

Recent Local Informational Queries

At the end of September, Danny Sullivan, Public Liaison for Search at Google, posted on the Google Keyword Blog about some recent queries on Google. Those contained questions about smoke-related to wildfires in California. One frequent query in the area was, “why is the sky orange?” Besides, the blog post told us about how Google might use contextual information about location and freshness of content in featured snippet answers.

You may notice that the location of searchers is not identified in the query. This is much like a search for different business types, such as restaurants or places to shop. The article about these queries is in the post at:

Why is the sky orange? How Google gave people the right info

Danny tells us about how Google might respond to these queries:

Well, language understanding is at the core of Search, but it’s not about the words. Critical context, like time and place, also helps us understand what you’re looking for. This is true for featured snippets, a feature in Search that highlights pages that our systems determine are likely a great match for your search. We’ve made improvements to understand better when fresh or local information — or both — is key to delivering relevant results to your search.

So this is pointing out that Google has improved answers for questions about fresh or local information (or both). The snippet from the post refers to critical context, and how Google may understand the context of a question is essential to how helpful it can be in answering questions.

Google tells us that “Our freshness indicators identified a rush of new content was being produced on this topic that was both locally relevant and different from the more evergreen content that existed.”

Since Google is actively engaged in indexing content on the web. They can notice bursty behavior about different topics and where it is from. That reminds me of a post I wrote back in 2008 called How Search Query Burstiness Could Increase Page Rankings. So Google can tell what people are searching for and where they are searching from. It can keep an eye on their log files. Google can tell what people are creating content about when it indexes new and updated web pages.

I liked this statement from the Google post, too:

Put, instead of surfacing general information on what causes a sunset, when people searched for “why is the sky orange” during this time, our systems automatically pulled in current, location-based information to help people find the timely results they were searching for.

Google May Use Local Context in Areas to Provide Relevant Results for People Searching From There

Danny also points out a query that sometimes surfaces from searchers in places such as New York City or Boston. They may ask, “Why is it Hazy?” to show that Google can use local context in those areas to provide relevant results for people searching from there.

This Google blog post provided information about a couple of queries specific to certain locations. Still, Google receives billions of queries a day, and they provide fresh and relevant results to all those queries when they receive them.

Understanding the context of questions people perform on different topics and from different places let people receive answers they have an interest in. The Google Blog post from Danny is worth reading and thinking about if you haven’t seen it.