Over the last year-and-a-half of tracking Google's daily "weather", it's become painfully clear to me that there's much more to future-proofing your SEO than just the core algorithm. From Knowledge Graph to In-depth articles, Google is launching new features faster than ever, and pages with nothing but ten blue links will soon be a memory.
So, we started working on a way to track how features change over time, and today I'm happy to announce the launch of the MozCast Feature Graph. It looks a little something like this:
Three tools in one
The Feature Graph is really three tools in one. The top graph shows a 30-day history of four major groups of features: Ads, Local, Knowledge Graph, and Verticals. The legend is color-coded to the bars at the bottom, which show the current density of each feature and the day-over-day change for that feature. So, for example, "Adwords (Top)" in the graph above shows that 77.9% of the queries tracked by MozCast displayed ads at the top the last time we checked them.
The third tool is my favorite, and the one that probably delayed this project the most. I've attempted to put some of the power of the raw data into your hands, and we've created a mini laboratory to find and preview SERPs.
The SERP mini-lab
Let's say you're looking for a SERP that has a Knowledge Graph entry, image results, and shopping results. Just check on the boxes next to those three features. As you add each feature, you'll see the "Matched Queries" box populate with a list of search terms:
Click on any of those queries, and you'll be taken to the corresponding Google search (parameterized to match the original capture as closely as possible). For example, if I click on "vespa", I get the following:
You can see the paid product placements and Knowledge Graph on the right, as well as the image results after the third organic listing. Note that these links are to live SERPs on Google.com – in some cases, the page may be slightly different from the one we visited the night before. This is especially true of AdWords placements, which can vary considerably from visit to visit.
When you select a feature or set of features, you don't just get sample queries - the 30-day graph at the top changes to match your search:
The lines on the graph now show the trends for each of the individual features you've selected. You can mouse over any point for the exact percentage on that day.
Bonus feature: new ads
There's one feature that works a bit differently than the rest. We've started tracking the prevalence of Google's new AdWords format, which is in large-scale testing but not fully live yet. The "New Ad Format" feature tracks the percentage of ads using the new format across the queries that displayed ads (not the entire query set). Please note that the new ad format is only rolled out for some users, so the search/preview function won't work properly (you may see the old ads). I've added this feature simply to track the roll-out over time.
Some technical notes
The Feature Graph is powered by the MozCast 10K, a set of 10,000 queries across 20 industry categories. Half of the MozCast 10K is delocalized and half is locally targeted (1,000 keywords each to 5 major cities). Local SEO features are measured only from the local data (5,000 total queries). All results are depersonalized.
A few thank-yous
I'd like to thank the inbound engineering team (Casey, Devin, and Shelly) for their help making this a reality, and our design leads, Daan and Derric, for hashing out a few ideas with me. Special thanks to Devin, who had the thankless job of translating my old-school PHP into something Moz-friendly that won't break 50 times/day.
Have fun with it
The Google SERP Feature Graph is live as of last night. This data has powered quit a few insights and blog posts over the past few months, and I'm excited to release it to the public. My hope is that people will use the tool to surface new SERP combinations and make their own discoveries. Let me know what you find.
Editor note: We had non-launch related outage of Mozcast around 12:30am PST, 12/10/13, if you had errors then. Service has been completely restored at 1:20am PST, and the new features are working. Enjoy.
Pete... do you know how many HOURS I am going to loose on MozCast from today?
Feel guilty :P
100% agree - I think thats really interesting and helpful - pretty nice feature!
That looks like a nice set of features - I really like the fact that they make Mozcast wholistic, because the searcher does experience the SERP ads, universal results, and all.
I was thinking this morning about making my look at Mozcast data an annual thing - this might make next year's a bit more work than this year's!
This is very good Pete. I take it this is limited to just U.S SERPs?
Yup... hopefully for the future it will be expanded to others countries (I think that support to Pete won't miss, starting from me).
It is currently, yes. Unfortunately, it would take a separate crawl per TLD/country to really get international data. One think I'm considering is doing some one time international data gathering, to see how certain country's feature sets compare with Google.com/US during a snapshot in time.
This will be great!!
And then by city :)
It looks promising. There has been a lot done by Google in past one year or so on look and feel of the SERP and search algorithms.
But the given link (https://mozcast.com/features) is not working. I am not sure if there is some problem at my end or something else. Is anybody facing the same issue?
I think MozCast is down!!
Our webhost for Mozcast went down, and we don't have an ETA from them. Hopefully back up soon. Sorry about that.
On edit: we're back!
Thanks Rand for the update.
Service has been restored to Mozcast. Thanks for your patience!
Super-cool tool and big thanks to "MOZ" team for making life even more easier. As you mentioned results are rendering completely different at my place (India) but anyway it's lot more useful.
Super-cool tool and big thanks to "MOZ" team for making life even more easier. As you mentioned results are rendering completely different at my place (India) but anyway it's lot more useful.
How can we see more keywords that match the checked icons than the few that are displayed?
So, that's the one not-completely-TAGFEE part of the tool. I'm hesitant to allow the entire list to be surfaced publicly (where someone could just keep querying and rebuild it), so the results are limited for now. If you have a specific question or area of interest, I could share via email. I often provide additional data to people who ask.
Great research, Pete! All of this is definitely going to take some time to sink in. Mozcast is always helpful with measuring the SERPs.
Great breakdown of Google's SERP products. This looks like it took a lot of time to compile.
Terrific tool offering valuable insights. Thank you. Does the roadmap include the ability to track for a period longer than 30 days?
Dr.Pete,This feature is quite good.MozCast is always helpful with measuring the SERPs.This is a perfect example of creating content for adding more value to users and search engines. Good work MOZ team.
Dr. Pete the mad scientist of SERPs! This is sick!
Great info to help marketers know where to prioritize their efforts on what organic and paid snippets to optimize for.
This is amazing. Seems like we could use Mozcast to prioritize what organic features to hit first. It would be awesome to be able to dive into the industry categories and see how the mix changes.
Very, very cool. Too soon for a feature request? Filter by Matched Queries...
Great work guys, I wondered how it would be possible to follow results on a Serp since all the personalization per user were being implemented. Looks like it will be possible after all, should have known Moz was on the trail!
Would Canada be included in this products service area?
Currently, MozCast operates on Google.com and via US addresses. Unfortunately, feature roll-out can vary wildly internationally, so in some cases this will be a preview of what's coming for non-US visitors.
Nice! Thanks for compromising my productivity this morning!
Now, I don't suppose that you can find a few spare minutes to roll-out multi-country support for MozCast. It would be *really* interesting to be able to track these features as they spread across the globe. (Anyone seen a Local Carousel in the UK?)
Any plans to increase the time-frame? 30 days doesn't seem to give much of a view of the overall trend (if any). There are lots of horizontal lines...
While multi-country support long-term probably isn't feasible for the project right now, I have been toying with doing some one-time runs on other TLDs to see how various features compare. As the feature set expands into more complex entities, like Knowledge Graph, it does seem like international results can vary wildly.
Yup @Praveen reffered link (https://mozcast.com/features) is not working at the moment hopefully the Moz team will fix it soon :)
As I mentioned above, unfortunately it's not within our control - our webhost for Mozcast (which isn't on the same servers as Moz.com) has gone down, and no ETA on when they'll be back yet.
On edit: We're back up!
And Mozcast is fixed! Thanks for your patience. :)
Thanks for the update
Nice word done by Moz Team. Google SERP Feature Graph is just awesome. This is a great addition to Mozcast.
Thank you Moz for this. :)
Looks Great. Nice work by MOZ team. Thanks for sharing.
Wow great work +pete as usual and really nice indeed the feature to have list of queries triggering such results I love it also "SERP mini-lab" then it will be esaier to mimic Google behaviour on similar keywords BIG THANKS
This is great, great work. Perfect example of curating content for more value for users AND search engines. :). Good job Dr. Pete and Moz.
Very cool tool! Love it Moz team.
very god infrmation.. thanks for sharing.