By now, we're all pretty used to Knowledge Graph results in the SERPs. But what could it mean when Google offers the ability to make a purchase, a call, book an appointment, or otherwise convert customers within those results? In this video blog, Alan Coleman speculates about a potential 100% conversion rate in the SERPs and raises the question of Google's role in an increasingly app-centric world.

Video transcript

In this video blog, I’m going to talk to you about a key trend we’ve noticed with Google here at Wolfgang.

12 months ago, the key trend that we were talking about was Google had shifted its focus. From Google’s birth right up until last year, its objective was to get you to the website that was most relevant, most authoritative, most likely to answer your question — whereas what we saw 12 months ago was Google taking a lot more ownership of your journey from question to answer. And what we were seeing 12 months ago was a lot more questions literally being answered on the SERPs, pulling information from Wikipedia, from other websites and giving that to the user directly on Google.

A very recent update to this innovation is that Google is now actually using their own search data to give you further details. Last weekend I was searching for a restaurant and not only did it give me the reviews in the knowledge panel — the website, phone number, and opening hours — it also used its own data to give me the popular times: when I was most likely to get seated in the restaurant, and when it could be a problem.

So, armed with that information, we could go and have a lovely Italian lunch last weekend. But it doesn’t just stop at answering the question.

Conversions facilitated on the SERPs

Google’s methodology has always been to test things out in the organic list first and then, when they’ve learned the mechanics of it, they might try and commercialize it. What we’re beginning to see is not just questions being answered on the SERPs, but we’re beginning to see conversions being facilitated by the SERPs.

What you’re seeing here is someone searching for a medical practitioner. The searcher is actually able to book an appointment directly from the search engine results page.

Another recent innovation: call-only campaigns. Somebody's searching for a courier, for example, and again, they can call the courier directly from the search engine results without even visiting the website. We’ve also seen click-to-call campaigns, another example of Google users being able to convert directly from the SERP. Very exciting! In theory, we’re talking about 100% conversion rates here: everyone who clicks on your ad becomes a lead or becomes a sale.

There’s also this beta which is currently out — with a very limited number of retailers in the States — whereby searchers are taken from search, to checkout, to placing their order in 3 clicks, all happening on a Google property.

Image courtesy of Google

Why I believe this is significant:

This is Google safeguarding its position as we move to an app ecosystem. World Wide Web usage is actually in decline of late, because people are moving so much of their web behavior to apps, and Google’s strength has been that it’s our gateway to the Web. Google went down for a period of 4 minutes two years ago, and World Wide Web traffic fell off a cliff — it declined by 40% for that period.

Google is our gateway to the Web. However, if we start moving our Internet usage to apps, Google needs to be relevant there as well. I see that answering questions within Google and on Google, allowing people to convert, again in Google and on Google, is a move for them to safeguard their position as the place where we get our questions answered and where we do our transactions on the Web.

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Do you have any thoughts on in-SERP conversions? Join the discussion in the comments below!