Google Search Starts Highlighting Results Directly on Webpages

Google has added a new content highlighting feature to its search engine that aims to make it easier to find key information on webpages, reports SearchEngineLand (via The Verge).

google search highlight
The feature works with Google's Featured Snippets, which appear at the top of search results. Clicking a snippet takes the user to the source webpage, but now the browser automatically scrolls down the page to the text that appeared in the snippet and highlights it in yellow.

Google says the feature has been available with AMP pages since December 2018, but this is the first time Google has rolled it out for regular HTML content, too.

Web developers don't need to do anything to get content highlighting working on their sites, as it's all managed at Google's end and happens automatically, although our tests backed up The Verge's claim that, currently, it doesn't always work.


The search shown in the images at the top of our article worked on desktop in Chrome, but not in Safari or Firefox, for example. They didn't work in the mobile versions of these browsers for us at all.

As noted by SearchEngineLand, the feature could have an impact on the ad market, since visitors may be automatically scrolled down past website ads to the highlighted content. In some instances, sites may need to relocate their ads to align with the new Google feature.

Tag: Google

Popular Stories

New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18

20 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18.2

Monday December 16, 2024 8:55 am PST by
Apple released iOS 18.2 in the second week of December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. Apple has added a handful of new non-AI related feature controls as...
apple tv 4k yellow bg feature

New Apple TV Rumored to Launch Next Year With These Features

Tuesday December 17, 2024 9:02 am PST by
The current Apple TV 4K was released more than two years ago, so the streaming device is becoming due for a hardware upgrade soon. Fortunately, it was recently rumored that a new Apple TV will launch at some point next year. Below, we recap rumors about the next-generation Apple TV. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last week reported that Apple has been working on its own combined Wi-Fi and...
iphone 16 apple intelligence

Apple Drops Plans for iPhone Hardware Subscription Service

Wednesday December 18, 2024 11:39 am PST by
Apple is no longer planning to launch a hardware subscription service that would let customers "subscribe" to get a new iPhone each year, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Gurman first shared rumors about Apple's work on a hardware subscription service back in 2022, and at the time, he said that Apple wanted to develop a simple system that would allow customers to pay a monthly fee to gain...
iPhone 17 Pro Dual Tone Feature 1

iPhone 17 Pro Rumored to Stick With 'Triangular' Camera Design

Wednesday December 18, 2024 2:36 am PST by
Contrary to recent reports, the iPhone 17 Pro will not feature a horizontal camera layout, according to the leaker known as "Instant Digital." In a new post on Weibo, the leaker said that a source has confirmed that while the appearance of the back of the iPhone 17 Pro has indeed changed, the layout of the three cameras is "still triangular," rather than the "horizontal bar spread on the...
elevation lab airtag battery

Your AirTag's Battery Will Last for Up to 10 Years With Elevation Lab's New TimeCapsule Enclosure

Wednesday December 18, 2024 10:05 am PST by
Elevation Lab today announced the launch of TimeCapsule, an innovative and simple solution for increasing the battery life of Apple's AirTag. Priced at $20, TimeCapsule is an AirTag enclosure that houses two AA batteries that offer 14x more battery capacity than the CR2032 battery that the AirTag runs on. It works by attaching the AirTag's upper housing to the built-in custom contact in the...
Apple TV 4K hero 221018 feature

Here is Everything New for the Apple TV in the tvOS 18.3 Update So Far

Tuesday December 17, 2024 6:25 am PST by
Apple on Monday seeded the first tvOS 18.3 beta to developers for testing. The update will likely be released in January. So far, there are only minor changes for the Apple TV, with one new feature and a few code changes discovered. Below, we outline what is new in tvOS 18.3 so far. Robot Vacuum Support in Home App First, tvOS 18.3 will add robot vacuum support to the Home app on the...
blackmagic vision pro

Blackmagic Debuts $30K 3D Camera for Capturing Video for Vision Pro

Monday December 16, 2024 4:17 pm PST by
Blackmagic today announced that its URSA Cine Immersive camera is now available for pre-order, with deliveries set to start late in the first quarter of 2025. Blackmagic says that this is the world's first commercial camera system designed to capture 3D content for the Vision Pro. The URSA Cine Immersive camera was first introduced in June, but it has not been available for purchase until...
iPhone 17 Slim Feature

'iPhone 17 Air' With 'Major' Design Changes and 19-Inch MacBook Detailed in New Report

Sunday December 15, 2024 9:47 am PST by
Apple is planning a series of "major design" and "format changes" for iPhones over the next few years, according to The Wall Street Journal's Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie. The paywalled report published today corroborated the widely-rumored "iPhone 17 Air" with an "ultrathin" design that is thinner than current iPhone models. The report did not mention a specific measurement, but previous...

Top Rated Comments

itsmilo Avatar
59 months ago
One more step to world domination by Google. Soon you won’t even have to leave google to do anything on the internet
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
biziclop Avatar
59 months ago
It works by appending a special # value to the link containing a text fragment, like a search expression. For example try this in chrome:
https://www.macrumors.com/#:~:text=Archives

Links with details:
[MEDIA=reddit]OutOfTheLoop/comments/f7cdd8[/MEDIA]
https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/4733392803332096
https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment


One more step to world domination by Google. Soon you won’t even have to leave google to do anything on the internet
What do you think what the actual purpose of AMP ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Mobile_Pages') links is?
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
mazz0 Avatar
59 months ago
Wait what!? Isn't it one of the fundamentals of web security that code on one site isn't able to effect another? Is Chrome disable XSS restrictions just for Google?
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
szw-mapple fan Avatar
59 months ago

Wait what!? Isn't it one of the fundamentals of web security that code on one site isn't able to effect another? Is Chrome disable XSS restrictions just for Google?
No. It actually just generates a custom url that chrome recognizes. For example, in the example given the actual URL from the search is [ICODE]https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/reset-airpods/#:~:text=Press%20and%20hold%20the%20button,indicating%20the%20%E2%80%8CAirPods%E2%80%8C%20have%20reset.[/ICODE] instead of [ICODE]https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/reset-airpods[/ICODE]. Chrome will then parse the part after [ICODE]#:~:text=[/ICODE] and scroll to that location. It's almost like a shortcut to cmd + F. Nothing too sinister. More details here on Github ('https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment').
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
EmotionalSnow Avatar
59 months ago

Are we going to pretend like AMP didn’t make the web faster?
The only thing it did for me was annoy me.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
velocityg4 Avatar
59 months ago
If they want useful features. They need a reference search mode. Where it only searches online forums, technical support articles, professional reviews, &c. It's really annoying trying to find information on a problem or technical info. Only to be presented with shopping results, company product pages, &c. Which have nothing to do with the search.

The closest they have is Google Scholar. But that is more for scientific papers than run of the mill help and how to.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)