Why being on page one is the easiest way to get an Answer Card

It sounds obvious – doesn’t it? To have a hope of featuring in the Answer Cards, you should be on page one. It’s one of those things that we accept as a given – but I wanted proof!

Doing a bit of multitasking, I tested this theory by searching for BBQ recipes (Shameless plug: Check out my instagram @licensetogrill365 for my best delicacies! 😉), and what I found was a very interesting inter-relationship between the fluctuating positions of the classic web results, and their visual Answer Card counterparts.

For more info on SERP Features, feel free to watch my webinar: What are SERP Features?

Answer Cards appear when a webpage climbs onto page one

What you are seeing here is the top 20 positions (see each column) on Google’s landscape, visualised for every day of the week.

In this example, I’ve honed in on one website (greedygourmet.com), so only its visibility is highlighted in the circles, as opposed to all returning sites and SERP Features.

This website features for both Answer Cards and Classic Links – the former, driven by the latter.

Positions rise in early May and, as the site moves onto page one, so the Answer Card appears. This went some way to proving my theory – but I wasn’t satisfied! So I continued digging.

Answer Cards disappear when the webpage drops off of page one

Friday 24th: This webpage dropped four positions, and the Answer Card dropped one place; replaced by a text ad from Weber (a BBQ manufacturing company) – taking advantage of a warm weekend. This ad ran for two days.

Saturday 25th: This webpage dropped off page one and the Answer Card disappeared entirely.

Was this just a coincidence, or did the SERPs deem this webpage unsatisfactory in matching the intent of the searcher, due to its disappearance from page one?

Answer Cards disappear entirely when the webpage continues to drop

Now as visibility drops further onto page two of Google, this webpage loses its Answer Card entirely, and it does not return.

This is just a short, granular experiment, but goes some way to proving the interrelationship between page one Classic Link visibility and Answer Card ownership!

In some rare cases I’ve seen exceptions to this rule, but being on page one for your focus search term is undoubtedly a crucial starting point for owning those SERP Features, which are inherently visual, and give your content a much better chance of being found!

If you found this interesting, keep checking back, as I’ll be putting up some more short SERP Feature experiments in the coming weeks! In the meantime, if you haven’t already done so, check out my recent video on How to Own Google Answer Cards.

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Thanks for reading 😉