Googles The latest developments!

Answered on Google

I love this #SERPFeature. 'Answered on Google' gives you short videos of celebrities answering the most common questions asked about them. It's been around on mobile since 2017, but it looks like it's just made its way on to desktop!

Currently Google has an app called 'Cameos' which lets you record this kind of video if you have the rights to do so and are 'Famous enough'. You can read more about that in Search Engine Land.

Will we see this SERP Feature being opened up to lesser known but still prominent individuals, like influencers or industry thought leaders?

And will the rules be relaxed so us non celebs are able to submit our own video answers and build our personal brand? If so, what a great opportunity for visibility and awareness!

Click to visit the search result

The zero result SERP

Whatever next Google? You've heard of the zero click SERP. What about the zero result SERP? With answers pulled from the Google Knowledge Graph directly into Google Autocomplete, why go any further than the search bar? I'd love to see more examples!

Hint: Try typing 'is Google' in and see what you get 😂

Restaurant & setting discovery categories

Depending on the type of food you're looking for searches for, whether it's 'Indian food', 'Italian food', 'Mexican food' etc., Google is now surfacing restaurants and 'settings' native in page one with its new food discovery category feature - i.e. 'Cozy settings', 'Romantic settings' etc.

So if you have a restaurant you need to know this and think about optimising for a category to make sure you appear in that one. All the results bring up Google's Map view, so Local SEO is also critical.

See examples:

[metaslider id=28351]

Research carousel

This great feature spot came from Alyson Lowe, Audience Growth Manager at Vogue - thanks for sharing Alyson! In this example, a search for ‘Mens skincare' returns a new 'Research' carousel.

This looks a lot like the ‘Top stories’ carousel, and promotes the same sites here - publishers. I suppose there are rarely top news stories for ‘Mens skincare’ but there are frequently articles surrounding this. This is a nifty way to showcase these articles!

Refine feature

When searching for ‘Mens shoes' I scrolled down the Google SERP to find this:

Google is guiding me to relevant brands for my search, based on style, brand and product line.
So Google is actually working hard here to help us filter within the SERP, getting closer to the intent and almost becoming the personal assistant it is inevitably destined to be!

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Together with the ‘Research carousel’, Google is seemingly replicating and facilitating the buyer journey within page one of Google. This is a fascinating development, which re-affirms Google’s ‘Stickiness’. But will smaller brands be able to take on the larger names here?

As with many of the rich Google SERP features, this feature group could ultimately lead to a dip in traffic, which some might argue is far from ideal. But in my mind, there are two options here: maintain traffic and conversions - i.e. business as usual - or structure your content to appear in this feature, accept a loss in traffic but see a spike in conversions - I know which one I prefer!

Podcasts

In June 2019 we began to see podcast searches returning actual players in Google’s SERP.

..and five months later this has evolved in to a podcast carousel:

In order to return this SERP, podcast producers will need a podcast landing page, and most importantly, need to host their podcast on Google Podcasts.

Clicking on the carousel takes you to Google Podcasts - just another way Google is monopolising the search results and ensuring users don’t actually need to leave Google to get what they want. Of course, this is still an awesome brand awareness opportunity.

Google is also now ‘listening’ to podcast audio, giving the searcher the ability to skip directly to the relevant audio content. Digesting all that audio will no doubt increase RankBrains & BERTs intelligence!

‘In this video’ feature

Much like Google’s podcast development, where relevant audio snippets are up offered to the searcher based on their query, last month I noticed video results had a new ‘In this video’ feature.

Google is actually understanding and breaking down video content to sort it into categories, so it can offer the user the most relevant part based on the searcher’s intent!

Structuring your video clearly will help Google in categorising the content.

Local pack images

The local pack, which consists of a map and pinned relevant establishments - with details listed beneath the map - is now showing an image carousel.

If relevant to the search, the listed local site will showcase a rotatable image carousel to the left hand side.

It looks as though this returns when Google believes a searcher will find images helpful, i.e. food, tourism, events.

Universities in Google’s SERP

In the US, colleges are getting a helping hand in mobile SERPs with a new college search feature.

Universities can often struggle to perform well in Google, and are often usurped by university leaderboard content etc. However, now on mobile only, a direct university search returns a snippet featuring a wealth of information!

This includes, admissions info, cost, programs, rankings, notable alumni and more!

This is a fantastic content opportunity for higher education providers to distinguish themselves from the competition!

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