All About Google: The SERPs

Not everyone is as obsessed about tracking changes to the Google search results as we are. The evolution of the search, and the results we all click on, is perhaps the more easily identifiable ways to track changes in Google search. As a marketer you may notice evolution through the jagged line of a traffic graph, a bump or dip in your revenue, or (mostly now historically) via a noticeable penalty. The experience of typing in a search, or calling out to Google, and receiving a page of results or verbal response, is how the audience you're serving is being delivered content. Let's dive into the changing landscape of search results and how can impact your SEO focus and strategy.

If you searched for “weather” on Google in December of 2000, you would’ve gotten back a SERP something like this (an ad followed by the familiar blue links of organic results):

Twenty years ago, one ad and ten blue links was a fairly typical result. Flash-forward to the present, and the top of the page would look something like this:

Most of your questions have been answered before you even see an organic search result, and while Weather.com might be getting a tiny bit of attribution, you can bet that their SEO efforts look nothing like they did even a decade ago. While this is just one niche, rich SERP features have exploded in the past decade.

As a professional SEO, you have to understand how to assess SERP opportunities and recognize that all keywords are not — from the perspective of organic search — created equal.

Organic opportunities

When Google uses the word “organic,” they typically mean “not paid.” When SEOs say “organic,” we tend to mean (not that we all agree on anything) the classic ten blue links. Reality is somewhere in-between, at least from an opportunity perspective.

Beyond the ten blue links, the most visible organic opportunity is Featured Snippets — promoted organic results that highlight an answer. Take, for example, this Featured Snippet for “What is advanced SEO?”:

This answer is directly extracted from the ranking page and determined not only by your ranking but by your content’s relevance to the search (but more on that in a moment). Somewhat related are “People Also Ask” (PAA) boxes (from the same SERP, in this case):

Each of these questions not only expands into something like a Featured Snippet (usually from content beyond the organic results on that page), but also generates new, related questions. “People Also Ask” boxes appear on a huge amount of competitive searches (according to our MozCast tracking site, over 90%), and can provide very useful insights into the questions everyday searchers are asking.

Other “organic” opportunities include features like review stars and FAQ links, where the result is directly linked to your site content and structure. As a professional SEO, it’s important to explore and test where these features can positively impact your search engagement and ROI.

A deep dive into every SERP feature is well beyond the scope of this chapter, but Featured Snippets deserve special attention. Currently, there are four main types:

1. Paragraph snippets

2. List snippets

3. Table snippets

4. Video snippets

According to a study by STAT, paragraph snippets represent about two-thirds of observed snippets, with lists coming in second. Here’s a list snippet for “What are the steps to keyword research?”:

When assessing Featured Snippets, it’s critically important to reflect on how much you’re giving away. A paragraph snippet with a simple answer might make clicking on your site unnecessary. A list snippet like the one above (especially with so many “...” answers) naturally drives searchers to want more.

Fortunately, targeting Featured Snippets is an inherently organic SEO task — the STAT study found that about 75% of Featured Snippets were promoted from the #1-#3 ranking positions. If you focus on SERPs where your competitor has a Featured Snippet and you rank in the #2-#5 position, you can potentially leap-frog over your organic competitor(s), even if those competitors are more authoritative.

Beyond ranking, it’s important to match the intent of the question/query. Does your content answer the question Google thinks people are asking? Also, be aware of Google’s preferred format. If Google is clearly promoting video or list content, for example, your big page of text probably won’t make the Featured Snippet cut.

There is no particular structured data (such as Schemas) that drive Featured Snippets. Google will attempt to use any structure in your content itself. For example, a list snippet could be pulled from an HTML list (<ol>, <ul>), but it could also be constructed from paragraph headers. Make sure your broad content structure is human-readable and matches searcher intent.

Vertical search typically refers to niche results that don’t entirely fit the ten blue links mold, such as news results (“Top Stories”), video results, and image results. Those three features also drive entirely separate search options, as seen on the top bar of most Google SERPs:

In many ways, these results are organic, in that your content and SEO efforts can influence the results, but (and this is critical) they often have separate or additional ranking factors. News results, in particular, may have barriers to entry that some sites can’t pass.

Since vertical opportunities also live on the main SERP, one key to professional SEO is to understand when and how your content fits a particular intent and when you might be better off targeting other searches. For example, consider the 7-pack of Top Stories:

While this variant is rare, this is a SERP where Google clearly expects up-to-date newsworthy intent and even the best evergreen content is unlikely to compete for clicks (or even rank). Likewise, if Google is highlighting video results for your target searches, then you either need to prioritize video content, find new targets that are a better fit to your content, or accept that search engagement with your content may be limited.

Put simply, the Knowledge Graph is a set of data sources that Google has deemed trustworthy and built a direct pipeline to. Knowledge Graph features take many forms, but let’s focus on just one of them. This is a direct answer on a search for “Who is the CEO of Google?”:

Answers are closely connected to what we call the “knowledge panel,” a collection of factoids that appears in the right-hand column on desktop results. While the Knowledge Graph can be a rich source of answers for searchers, it represents no organic opportunity for SEOs. Your content can’t directly rank for these answers or panels, and typically the Knowledge Graph serves simple, factual searches that can be satisfied with short answers.

While it’s not much fun to think about, it’s important as a professional SEO to realize when you’re heading into territory that could be usurped by the Knowledge Graph. For example, there used to be an entire niche of sites devoted to providing the dates of notable events. Now, if I run a search like “When is National Taco Day?”, I’ll simply get a Knowledge Card:

If that’s all I needed to know, then we’re done here — I have no reason to doubt Google on this topic and no need to click on an organic result. If most of your content can easily be summarized with factual information, you need to evaluate the risks and consider how to add value beyond basic answers to questions. Otherwise, you risk SEO obsolescence.

Paid/advertising opportunities are the one category that everyone agrees aren’t organic. From a professional SEO standpoint, though, it’s important to recognize when a search is clearly dominated by paid results. This includes not only ads at the top and bottom, but shopping results. Consider this set of results for “android phones”:

While this may look like informational content, every one of these is a paid/shopping result. This SERP is dominated by big retailers and review sites. If you’re a smaller retailer, you may have to decide whether this SERP is worth the price tag.

As an SEO, especially in a consulting or agency role, it’s important to understand where you can add the most value and to be honest about when paid search may be more applicable. This isn’t just the right thing to do, but it focuses your time and attention on what you do best.

Practically, this may mean re-focusing your content strategy farther up the funnel. A search like “Android phones” is clearly considered transactional by Google, including ads and local results. Consider the following searches, however:

• “Newest Android phone features”

• “How often should I upgrade my Android phone?”

• “Which Android phone is the best value?”

Google currently treats all of these as informational queries and returns organic content. At the same time, though, all of these questions reflect some interest in buying a new Android phone. Shifting up the funnel can help you stay focused on organic SEO and deliver the best results.

As an organic SEO, when you think of local search, you might think of the local/map pack, such as this local pack on a SERP for “bakery” in this suburban Chicago neighborhood:

Let’s say you’re doing SEO for a national bakery chain. Your first reaction might be: “That’s fine — I’m focused on organic.” Here’s the number one organic result for that same search:

This is a single-location business that — while well-known locally — has no national presence and no high-spend organic or paid search efforts. It’s clear here, as in many SERPs, that localization is more than a feature — it’s an algorithmic layer Google is applying to the entire result. As a professional SEO, even if your primary focus is organic, it’s no longer adequate to dismiss local SEO as another person’s job.

No single metric tells us the full story. If your ranking goes up, but your critical keywords are taken over by SERP features, your celebration might be short-lived. It’s important to understand your search space and how it and searchers are changing. Thankfully, many tools (including Moz) track rich SERP features and other changes, but your human intelligence is still critical.

Let’s say that your boss is obsessed with ranking #1 for “laptops”. You, being an experienced SEO, know that this is a very competitive (and very expensive) space, but you want to stay employed. One day, you’re looking at the SERP and notice this feature:

It’s toward the bottom and unlikely to have a huge impact on CTR, so maybe you just ignore it. If you do, you’re missing a lot. Notice that every click in this feature takes you to another Google search, such as “Lenovo laptop.” That SERP has more refinements, which take you down another level to specific models such as “Lenovo Thinkpad.”

This all goes back to Google’s intent. Google realizes that people typing “laptops” don’t know what they want, as they’re probably very early in the buying cycle (if they’re buying anything at all). For Google, this means that ads are less effective, and so they want to push searchers down the funnel. For you, it means that this vanity keyword likely isn’t money well-spent.

The SERPs aren’t an isolated collection of organic results, paid results, and rich features – each of them is a story about the searcher journey. Modern SEO is about understanding that story.

Organic rankings drive traffic, and relevant organic rankings drive conversion, but you have to understand the broader ecosystem of your own SERPs, as that ecosystem could either contain untapped opportunities or limit the effectiveness of the ten blue links. Even the “ten blue links” is an anachronism — page one of Google these days could have as few as four results that we would traditionally call “organic” in the SEO industry.

Rich SERP features fundamentally changed the landscape of search results. It’s important to have the tools to map that landscape, understand the broader opportunities, and know when it might be time to set your sights on new lands and new keywords.

Next up: Keywords & Content

Strategic keyword research for SEO professionals.

Written by Dr. Pete Meyers, Moz's very own search scientist and MozCast wrangler.