Google’s New Snippet Controls Rolling Out In A Few Days With Changes To Google France

Google has given us a heads up that the new snippet controls it announced a few weeks ago will begin rolling out “in a few days” and “be fully live worldwide by next week.” This coincides with the European press publications changes in France, where Google cannot show snippets, which “will be fully live by October 24.”

Here are the tweets announcing this rollout:

Beginning in a few days, Google Search will start using new preview markup in search results. It will be fully live worldwide by next week. Learn more about the new markup here: https://t.co/hmjhcvguJF

— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) October 16, 2019

New markup settings allow sites to specify how much preview content they want Google Search to display. We’ll gradually begin implementing the changes over the next few days and be fully live worldwide around a week later. Learn more here: https://t.co/yefWYGMizu

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) October 16, 2019

Here is where it mentions the French law:

Starting later this week, Google will change the way it presents search results for European press publications to people in France. It will be fully live by Oct. 24. More details here: https://t.co/nRT1KmFubq

— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) October 16, 2019

Following a new French copyright law & what publishers specify, Google Search will change how it previews results of European press publications to those in France. We’ll gradually begin this in the next few days. It will be fully live by Oct. 24. More:https://t.co/wj7YfAuolJ

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) October 16, 2019

Here is the FAQ on the French bit.

If you missed the announcement from a few weeks ago, here are the new snippet controls:

Here are the new controls:

• “nosnippet”
  This is an existing option to specify that you don’t want any textual snippet shown for this page.
• “max-snippet:[number]”
  New! Specify a maximum text-length, in characters, of a snippet for your page.
• “max-video-preview:[number]”
  New! Specify a maximum duration in seconds of an animated video preview.
• “max-image-preview:[setting]”
  New! Specify a maximum size of image preview to be shown for images on this page, using either “none”, “standard”, or “large”.

You can use this as standalone meta tags or combine them, so you can use something like this:

There is also a new data-nosnippet HTML attribute for this that looks like this:

We’ve seen samples of Google not showing anything but the URL in search, we assumed it was a bug. But probably it was Google testing this.

Google did send out emails to publishers who would be impacted by this French law.

Anyway, you should see the new snippet controls and French change starting Friday and as it rolls out through next week.

Forum discussion at Twitter.