From Featured Snippets to In-depth Articles to Knowledge Panels, Google SERP features have remade the search marketing landscape. After three years of planning and many months of work, I'm thrilled to announce the launch of advanced SERP feature tracking in Moz Pro, available immediately to all customers! Using the most comprehensive data set on the market, Moz Pro now provides advanced analysis of the 16 features listed below:
Try it now under the [Rankings] tab within any campaign (see screenshot below), or read on for a walk-through of the new features. New to Moz Pro? Take a free 30-day trial!
Stage 1: Awareness
At MozCon 2013, I gave a talk called Beyond 10 Blue Links, documenting the diversity of Google features surrounding organic results. Many of us at Moz felt strongly that the world of SERP features could have a profound impact on search marketers, and so we started to catalog Google's changes and collect the data to find out just how much SERPs were evolving.
In early 2014, we built a prototype to better understand how we could help customers track SERP features, but we discovered that most of our customers were unfamiliar with them. None of us knew, at the time, exactly what impact SERP features were having or how we should adjust our tactics. The idea of tracking possibly dozens of types of results was daunting, especially in an industry where most of us already wore too many hats.
So, we kept tracking the data, and we learned along with the industry. We also, I hope, contributed to that education. We built the infrastructure we knew we'd need down the road (much credit to our Silo team), even if we weren't sure when the turn in that road would come. Eventually – and in large part due to the growth of Featured Snippets – we knew that our customers were ready.
Stage 2: Acceptance
As of August, 86% of the SERPs in our 10,000-keyword tracking set had some kind of non-organic feature (a Knowledge Panel, a Featured Snippet, Rich Snippets, a Local Pack, etc.). If you count ads and shopping results, that number goes up to 97% – the days of 10 blue links are long gone.
We recently did an analysis of over 400,000 search result interactions (thanks to Russ Jones) and found that SERPs with rich features send 28% fewer clicks to traditional organic results. At the same time, many of these features, including Featured Snippets, create new opportunities for non-traditional clicks. Either way, the impact on your SEO is very real, and it's essential to understand what you're up against.
The challenge in tracking SERP features, as an SEO, is that which features matter to you can vary wildly with your niche. I've seen a single feature radically impact traffic for some sites, while that same feature may have little or no impact on others. Once you've accepted the reality of SERP features, you have to understand how the landscape looks for your own industries and sites:
One of the first things you'll see on the new SERP Features page is the overview. This graph shows the presence of features across your campaign, as well as the proportion of features that you're listed in (where applicable). At launch, we support the 16 highest-impact desktop SERP features. Click on the pull-down above the graph, and you can pull up a Trended Analysis for any feature. Good news: we've already got a 60-day history available at launch:
It's time to accept that SERP features really do exist, and dive into the details. Scrolling down, you'll see a comprehensive list of your Campaign keywords along with your current ranking, plus the features those keywords displayed the last time we checked them:
The keyword list shows all of your campaign keywords, along with their rankings and a list of icons signaling which features appeared on those SERPs. Blue icons indicate that your site appears in the feature, red icons indicate your competitor is in it, and orange icons mean that you're both listed (this might occur in multi-listing features, such as News Packs).
At the top of the page, you can narrow your list by keyword, label, location, or feature. Let's say you just wanted to see keywords with Featured Snippets. Next to the funnel icon at the top, click [+], then select "SERP Feature" and choose one from the list:
The overview graph and keyword list are both filtered now, and you can explore whatever features are most applicable to your work.
Stage 3: Opportunity
So, what do you do with this knowledge? We've developed an insights system to help you answer that question. For example, if a keyword in your campaign currently displays a Featured Snippet, and you rank in the top 5 organic results, you've got a decent shot at being able to compete for that snippet. So, we call that out:
Click on any keyword with "Insights" to see possible opportunities. At launch, we highlight keywords with Featured Snippets, News Packs, Reviews, Videos, and Site Links (if you're not currently listed in them). We hope to add more insights in the near future.
Bonus: Questions in KWE
Want to put this to the test today? Here's a way to easily start tracking Featured Snippet opportunities. Go to Keyword Explorer, enter a term, view all results, and then, in the first pulldown select [are questions]. You'll get a list of question suggestions related to your chosen search term:
Now, select the questions that interest you, and add them to your Campaign. We'll start tracking Featured Snippets and other SERP features, and soon you'll be discovering new opportunities to stand out from your competition.
Thanks to everyone involved on the Product and Design teams, and special thanks to our Silo team for putting the pieces in place over the past year to make tracking features possible. Please reach out to us with any comments or suggestions, and we hope you enjoy the new features!
Cool feature I didn't even know about until 5 minutes ago - click on the "SERP Features" column header in the keyword list and you can sort by features that you or your competitors are in. Get a quick summary in seconds.
I´m going to sign for Free Trial right now
Really impressive work Pete, Jon, and the entire Pro Campaigns team. I appreciate so much that the features you can see in KW Explorer now track to the one you'll see in Moz Pro Campaigns.
Also loved the direct link to the feature: https://analytics.moz.com/serp-features
I think every product launch should have one of those -- rather than making folks dig to find it in their campaigns or set one up, it just takes you right to your last campaign or shows you a sample one. Smart!
Question: Any chance that analysis of 400K search results from Russ with CTRs will be published? Would love to see that! :-)
I will ask Russ - yes, we should provide a bit more of that data/context.
I am using Moz trial version and I am loving it. There is lot of insights available for all my projects at one single platform, that's amazing.
I hope to see PDF printing and specific project sharing soon.
Pete, you and the Moz team never cease to provide incredible value and insight to my job. I am a young SEO and your tools/blog posts have helped advance my career more quickly than I ever could have accomplished without them. I'll most definitely be playing around with this new feature at work today and looking for new opportunities for my clients. Thanks again!
Hi
I already tried it in one of our campaigns. All I can say is that is really cool and that the insights are very helpful: not only informative, but give a bit of the push needed to get and do something about an opportunity.
Very much appreciated and since you wrote about cards a couple of days ago I would guess the functionalities shown today are meant to evolve along with the Serp... good news indeed-
I may be nitpicking here but I think you've got the icons for AdWords Top and AdWords Bottom flipped. When I see the dollar sign above the line, I think that means "paid to be on top". Just my two cents and I'm sure you've already discussed internally.
Looks great, I can't wait to check it out in my campaigns!
Ahhh... interesting point. The line on the icon is supposed to be the ad text, and the "$" just indicative of it being an ad, but I can definitely see your interpretation.
Cool! Kinda sad my work day already ended ... now I am home and cannot check this out immediately. At least I know how I will start tomorrow. :o
Sleep fast, and get back to work! ;)
Excellent article, the truth that you learn a lot with your post.
Thank you!
Nice!!!! Thanks Moz
I 'll have to try MOZ pro in the next few days. Thanks Peter.
Nice little (not so little) feature. I have started to have a bit of a play and can already see a number of opportunities that we are lacking for SERP domination. With this tool I will hopefully find valuable channels to help increase our organic and ad related exposure. Top work Mozzers :)
Hi Pete
Wow. We have to try this new tool MOZ pro. And see if I can find a hole and I can see my doubts twitter.
Thank you very much for the information
Well, if you find any holes, let us know - our shovels are ready :)
Before going to pro , better to try all the features just by using trial version.
Hi Pete,
Interesting addition to the pro version of Moz. As a big fan of Structured Data and featured snippets, this is an excellent feature, I will be keeping my eye on over the coming months!
Thanks again
thank you for sharing.i have an one doubt ask for you.how to analysis the website & any tools are available means pls to mention me
Thank you very much for your contribution peter !! Your knowledge is very important to be able to put it into practice in my projects.
thats great tool guys! I think this is gonna help me a lot to fight the competition :)
Thanks Moz!!
Nice
Looks interesting....nice
Awesome new feature! And I can't wait until Related Topics is added too :-)
Some time free trial work great but if need more then go for professional, Great feature with full of expanding.
Very good points. I've stated noticing more Knowledge graphs appearing even for some niche content phrases that we rank flor.
Export to PDF function: would love to see SERP Features written out in the chart, as currently the chart does not include labels, and as result not as useful as it can be. Looking forward to this ;)
Hi Vadim,
Thank you for the bug report. If you give it another try, you should now be able to see x-axis icons when exporting to PDF.
Michael
The 16 SERP Features currently displayed are they all inclusive, all representative or some serp features are ommitted?
Some low-volume features are not currently displayed, such as Knowledge Carousels. Some features are not in the list because they're either very new or mobile-only. We will be evaluating AMP and Google Posts over the next couple of months for example. We've got space in the UI for maybe 5-ish more features and our assumption is that the list will change/expand over time.
If you've got a specific one in mind, though, feel free to let us know.
I was curious about mobile features
That is fantastic--nice work and thank you for making my day! (Been waiting and hoping for this for a while now!)
Quick question--does it track Adwords for your brand if you use a subdomain. We currently use Unbounce for all landing pages and I was just curious if they will be track the same as our domain. (Probably a stupid question...)
I don't think we're tracking inclusion in ads at this moment. We're treating ads as more of a on/off feature, since we're not traditionally in the paid search space. I can definitely see where expanding that would be useful, though. The current use case is more along the lines of helping people understand if Google thinks a query is commercial (has ads/shopping/etc.).
Totally understand--that makes a lot of sense! Thank you so much!
Thanks for the information, did not know these tips.
Good article!
Great tool! We will have to implement it very soon. Thanks for your post!
I undertand, I need to try, I hope optimize my webs
Awesome, I can't wait to test this out!
Gotta try this out, thanks for sharing.
It looks interesting MOZ this new tool, the need to try as soon as possible, thanks for your post
Would love to test it out. Going to get a subscription very soon.