Today I was happily searching through the web and was researching the World Cancer Research Fund website when I noticed a "Jump to " with a link to the META Description!
This appears to have been created because Google noted the original webpage uses a HTML element called "Named Anchor Links". Named anchor links are user enhancement, which aids visitors to navigate to the correct section of a web page, quickly without having to scroll through lots of text.
The "jump to" element appears to use the named anchor element within the Meta description in SERP’s (search engine results pages) in the above format (see image).
This new “named anchor snippet” appears to be a new function alongside the recent changes to Google breadcrumbs .
I must say I quite like these changes, if the users can be sent deep into the website directly, to the content they require then all the better. Google is certainly standing by it moto “It’s all about the user experience” and this change will certainly benefit the users.
Hmm I wonder if everyone will start using Anchor links in their sites?
Tags: google, jump to, meta description, named anchor, SEO, SERP
About the author: Hannah Miller
SEO Manager – Hannah MillerHannah manages a team of SEO experts in the 4Ps office. She is a specialist in technical aspects effecting SEO.
This is fantastic news, I’ve always been a big fan of anchors for usability – I hate lots and lots of text; much prefer to break it up in boxes with a ‘back to the top’ link. However, I’m very guilty or naming them ‘a’,'b’ and ‘c’. So as part of my SEO role now at work, I’ll probably set some time aside for renaming them.
We implemented breadcrumbs just before Google rolled out that feature too (again for usability, not really for SEO, though we knew it would benefit) and we found a lot of pages jumped up the SERPs. Let’s hope they stay there!
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