In August of 2012, Google launched 7-result SERPs, transforming page-one results. MozCast data initially showed that as many as 18% of the queries we tracked were affected. We’ve been collecting data on the phenomenon ever since, and putting some of the most common theories to the test. This is the story of the 7-result SERP as we understand it today (image created with PULP-O-MIZER).
I. 7-Result SERPs in The Wild
By now, you’ve probably seen a few 7-result SERPs in the “wild”, but I think it’s still useful to start at the beginning. Here are a few examples (with screenshots) of the various forms the 7-result SERP takes these days. I apologize in advance for the large images, but I think it's sometimes important to see the full-length SERP.
(1) The “Classic” 7-Result SERP
The classic 7-result SERP usually appears as a #1 listing with expanded site-links (more on that later), plus six more organic listings. Here’s a screenshot from a search for “some ecards”, a navigational query:
(2) The 7 + 7 with Local Results
It’s also possible to see 7-result SERPs blended with other types of results, including local “pack” results. Here’s the result of a search with local intent – “williamsburg prime outlets”:
(3) The 6 + Image Mega-Pack
It’s not just organic results that can appear in the #1 spot of a 7-result SERP, though. There’s a rare exception when a “mega-pack” of images appears at the top of a SERP. Here’s a “7-result” SERP with one image pack and six organic listings – the search is “pictures of cats”:
II. Some 7-Result SERP Stats
Our original data set showed 7-result page-one SERPs across about 18% of the queries we tracked. That number has varied over time, dropping as low as 13%. Recently, we’ve been experimenting with a larger data set (10,000 keywords). Over the 10 days from 1/13-1/22 (the data for this post was collected around 1/23), that data set tracked 7-result SERPs in the range of 18.1% - 18.5%. While this isn’t necessarily representative of the entire internet, it does show that 7-result SERPs continue to be a significant presence on Google.
These percentages are calculated by unique queries. We can also looking at query volume. Using Google’s “global” volume (exact-match), the percentage of queries by volume with 7-result SERPs for 1/22 was 19.5%. This compares to 18.5% by unique queries. Factoring in volume, that’s almost a fifth of all queries we track.
Here are the 7-result SERP percentages across 20 industry categories (500 queries per category) for 1/22:
| CATEGORY | 7-SERPS |
| Apparel | 23.6% |
| Arts & Entertainment | 16.8% |
| Beauty & Personal Care | 12.6% |
| Computers & Consumer Electronics | 16.8% |
| Dining & Nightlife | 27.2% |
| Family & Community | 13.2% |
| Finance | 19.2% |
| Food & Groceries | 13.4% |
| Health | 3.8% |
| Hobbies & Leisure | 11.0% |
| Home & Garden | 20.0% |
| Internet & Telecom | 12.6% |
| Jobs & Education | 21.4% |
| Law & Government | 16.2% |
| Occasions & Gifts | 7.8% |
| Real Estate | 13.2% |
| Retailers & General Merchandise | 29.6% |
| Sports & Fitness | 28.6% |
| Travel & Tourism | 36.2% |
| Vehicles | 26.0% |
These categories were all borrowed from the Google AdWords keyword research tool. The most impacted vertical is “Travel & Tourism”, at 36.2%, with “Health” being the least impacted. At only 500 queries/category, it’s easy to over-interpret this data, but I think it’s interesting to see how much the impact varies.
III. The Site-Link Connection
Many people have hypothesized a link between expanded site-links and 7-result SERPs. We’ve seen a lot of anecdotal evidence, but I thought I’d put it to the test on a large scale, so we collected site-link data (presence and count) for the 10,000 keywords in this study.
Of the 1,846 queries (18.5%) in our data set that had 7-result SERPs on the morning of 1/22, 100% of them had expanded site-links for the #1 position. There were 45 queries that had expanded site-links, but did not show a 7-result count, but those were all anomalies based on how we count local results (we include blended local and packs in the MozCast count, whereas Google may not). There is nearly a perfect, positive correlation between 7-result SERPs and expanded site-links. Whatever engine is driving one also very likely drives the other.
The only minor exception is the image blocks mentioned above. In those cases, the image “mega-pack” seems to be the equivalent of expanded site-links. Internally, we count those as 6-result SERPs, but I believe Google sees them as a 7-result variant.
While most (roughly 80%) of 7-result SERPs have six expanded site-links, there doesn’t seem to be any rule about that. We’re tracking 7-result SERPs with anywhere from one to six expanded site-links. It doesn’t take a full set of site-links to trigger a 7-result SERP. In some cases, it seems to just be the case that the domain only has a limited number of query-relevant pages.
IV. 7-Result Query Stability
Originally, I assumed that once a query was deemed “worthy” of site-links and a 7-result SERP, that query would continue to have 7 results until Google made a major change to the algorithm. The data suggests that this is far from true – many queries have flipped back and forth from 7 to 10 and vise-versa since the 7-result SERP roll-out.
While our MozCast Top-View Metrics track major changes to the average result count, the real story is a bit more complicated. On any given day, a fairly large number of keywords flip from 7s to 10s and 10s to 7s. From 1/21 to 1/22, for example, 61 (0.61%) went from 10 to 7 results and 56 (0.56%) went from 7 to 10 results. A total of 117 “flips” happened in a 24-hour period – that’s just over 1% of queries, and that seems to be typical.
Some keywords have flipped many times – for example, the query “pga national” has flipped from 7-to-10 and back 27 times (measured once/day) since the original roll-out of 7-result SERPs. This appears to be entirely algorithmic – some threshold (whether it’s authority, relevance, brand signals, etc.) determines if a #1 result deserves site-links, probably in real-time, and when that switch flips, you get a 7-result SERP.
V. The Diversity Connection
I also originally assumed that a 7-result SERP was just a 10-result SERP with site-links added and results #8-#10 removed. Over time, I developed a strong suspicion this was not the case, but tracking down solid evidence has been tricky. The simple problem is that, once we track a 7-result SERP, we can’t see what the SERP would’ve looked like with 10 results.
This is where query stability comes in – while it’s not a perfect solution (results naturally change over time), we can look at queries that flip and see how the 7-result SERP on one day compares to the 10-result SERP on the next. Let’s look at our flipper example, “pga national” – here are the sub-domains for a 7-result SERP recorded on 1/19:
- www.pgaresort.com
- www.pganational.com
- en.wikipedia.org
- www.jeffrealty.com
- www.tripadvisor.com
- www.pga.com
- www.pgamembersclub.com
The previous day (1/18), that same query recorded a 10-result SERP. Here are the sub-domains for those 10 results:
- www.pgaresort.com
- www.pgaresort.com
- www.pgaresort.com
- www.pgaresort.com
- www.pganational.com
- en.wikipedia.org
- www.tripadvisor.com
- www.pga.com
- www.jeffrealty.com
- www.bocaexecutiverealty.com
The 10-result SERP allows multiple listings for the top domain, whereas the 7-result SERP collapses the top domain to one listing plus expanded site-links. There is a relationship between listings #2-#4 in the 10-result SERP and the expanded site-links in the 7-result SERP, but it’s not one-to-one.
Recently, I happened across another way to compare. Google partners with other search engines to provide data, and one partner with fairly similar results is EarthLink. What’s interesting is that Google partners don’t show expanded site-links or 7-result SERPs – at least not in any case I’ve found (if you know an exception, please let me know). Here’s a search for “pga national” on EarthLink on 1/25:
- www.pgaresort.com
- www.pgaresort.com
- www.pgaresort.com
- www.pganational.com
- en.wikipedia.org
- www.tripadvisor.com
- www.jeffrealty.com
- www.pga.com
- www.bocaexecutiverealty.com
- www.devonshirepga.com
Again, the #1 domain is repeated. Looking across multiple SERPs, the pattern varies a bit, and it’s tough to pin it down to just one rule for moving from 7 results to 10 results. In general, though, the diversity pattern holds. When a query shifts from a 10-result SERP to a 7-result SERP, the domain in the #1 spot gets site-links but can’t occupy spots #2-#7.
Unfortunately, the domain diversity pattern has been hard to detect at large-scale. We track domain diversity (percentage of unique sub-domains across the Top 10) in MozCast, but over the 2-3 days that 7-results SERPs rolled out, overall diversity only increased from 55.1% to 55.8%.
Part of the problem is that our broad view of diversity groups all sub-domains, meaning that the lack of diversity in the 10-result SERPs could overpower the 7-result SERPs. So, what if we separate them? Across the core MozCast data (1K queries), domain diversity on 1/22 was 53.4%. Looking at just 7-result SERPs, though, domain diversity was 62.2% (vs. 54.2% for 10-result SERPs). That’s not a massive difference, but it’s certainly evidence to support the diversity connection.
Of course, causality is tough to piece together. Just because 7-result SERPs are more diverse, that doesn’t mean that Google is using domain crowding as a signal to generate expanded site-links. It could simply mean that the same signals that cause a result to get expanded site-links also cause it to get multiple spots in a 10-result SERP.
VI. The Big Brand Connection
So, what drives 7-result SERPs? Many people have speculated that it’s a brand signal – at a glance, there are many branded (or at least navigational) queries in the mix. Many of these are relatively small brands, though, so it’s not a classic picture of big-brand dominance. There are also some 7-result queries that don’t seem branded at all, such as:
- “tracking santa”
- “cool math games for kids”
- “unemployment claim weeks”
- “cell signaling”
- “irs transcript”
Granted, these are exceptions to the rule, and some of these are brand-like, for lack of a better phrase. The query “irs transcript” does pull up the IRS website in the top spot – the full phrase may not signal a brand, but there’s a clear dominant match for the search. Likewise, “tracking santa” is clearly NORAD’s domain, even if they don’t have a domain or brand called “tracking santa”, and even if they’re actually matching on “tracks santa”.
In some cases, there does seem to be a brand (or entity) bias. Take a search for “reef”, which pulls up Reef.com in the #1 spot with four site-links:
Not to pick on Reef.com, but I don’t think of them as a household name. Are they a more relevant match to “reef” than any particular reef (like the Great Barrier Reef) or the concept of a reef in general? It could be a question of authority (DA = 66) or of the Exact-Match Domain in play – unfortunately, we throw around the term “brand” a lot, but we don’t often dig into how that translates into practical ranking signals.
I pulled authority metrics (DA and PA) for a subset of these queries, and there seems to be virtually no correlation between authority (as we measure it) and the presence of site-links. An interesting example is Wikipedia. It occupies over 11% of the #1 results (yeah, it’s not your imagination), but only seven of those 1,119 queries have 7-result SERPs. This is a site with a Domain Authority of 100 (out of 100).
VII. The "Entity" Connection
One emerging school of thought is that named entities are getting more ranking power these days. A named entity doesn’t have to be a big brand, just a clear match to a user’s intent. For example, if I searched for “sam’s barber shop”, SamsBarberShop.com would much more likely match my intent than results for barbers who happened to be named Sam. Sam’s Barber Shop is an entity, regardless of its Domain Authority or other ranking signals. This goes beyond just an exact-match domain (EMD) connection, too.
I think that 7-result SERPs and other updates like Knowledge Graph do signal a push toward classifying entities and generally making search reflect the real world. It’s not going to be enough in five years simply to use keywords well in your content or inbound anchor links. Google is going to want to want to return rich objects that represent “real-world” concepts that people understand, even if those concepts exist primarily online. This fits well into the idea of the dominant interpretation, too (as outlined in Google’s rater guidelines and other documents). Whether I search for “Microsoft” or “Sam’s Barber Shop”, the dominant interpretation model suggests that the entity’s website is the best match, regardless of other ranking factors or the strength of their SEO.
There's only one problem with the entity explanation. Generally speaking, I'd expect an entity to be stable – once a query was classified as an entity and acquired expanded sitelinks, I'd expect it to stay that way. As mentioned, though, the data is fairly unstable. This could indicate that entity detection is dynamic – based on some combination of on-page/link/social/user signals.
VIII. The Secret Sauce is Ketchup
Ok, maybe “secrets” was a bit of an exaggeration. The question of what actually triggers a 7-result SERP is definitely complicated, especially as Google expands into Knowledge Graph and advanced forms of entity association. I'm sure the broader question on everyone's mind is "How do I get (or stop getting) a 7-result SERP?" I'm not sure there's any simple answer, and there's definitely no simple on-page SEO trick. The data suggests that even a strong link profile (i.e. authority) may not be enough. Ultimately, query intent and complex associations are going to start to matter more, and your money keywords will be the ones where you can provide a strong match to intent. Pay attention not only to the 7-result SERPs in your own keyword mix, but to queries that trigger Knowledge Graph and other rich data – I expect many more changes in the coming year.
To be very frank, this was a puzzle for me to understand the concept behind 7 results concept. I tried my best to understand the concept but only today i got to know the basics of this concept. You have a great job by explaining each and every step. I am sure lost of wondering professional will be grateful to you inducing myself.
Ya. It was definitely the puzzle to be solved. Dr Pete as always done wonders in making us understanding the serp behavior. 7 result serp was for big brand name searches, also for some searches with local intent was what we webmasters knew till now. But this data has some more things to say about it. I think it really makes sense for Google to show less number of results for "Big Brand Name" searches as most of the people would definitely be looking to navigate to a brand's website and nothing else. With other 7 result serps, advantage for them is lesser the no. of results, more will be the number of people visiting the second page and more will be the ad impressions, clicks and revenues (This case doesn't apply for big brand name searches as only in some cases the ads are displayed for the brand names searched provided the brand is big and running an ad for its brand name searches as well).
Exactly the same happened with me. I was struggling to find how this can be acheived and what it is called. Tried to get help from SEO guys as well, but didn't come up to the understanding. Puzzle thing is so true for me as well!! Excellento Post!
That's Maths for you / Metrics..
Well it was and is still a mystery but I know some guys on free lancing portals doing this stuff for clients on daily basis and feed of client is 5 out 5. Its just the Mathematical metrics and algorithm which we need to usderstand
Little bit confusing for me the part of category, Google automatically update category of my sites. I have a website which provides auto repair service and break repair service. earlier Google shows auto repair category but now it shows completely different which is not related to the them of website. Pete can you please explain why?
Are you talking about categories in AdWords or in a Google+ business listing? Unfortunately, those are both entirely different animals. I was just providing category breakdowns for reference - those came from the categories Google assigned to the keywords in AdWords.
I believe that the 7 results are related to brand name search queries (which will almost always have site links). This makes it more difficult to compete on competitor brand terms.
I think we have to be careful with the brand hypothesis, until we can pin down what "brand" means. I see no evidence for a clear big-brand bias here - smaller entities are often getting 7-result SERPs, too. In addition, some non-brand queries get them. I think the trick is separating the advantages big brands naturally have out, and figuring out which ones are key. In this case, though, I don't think it's a factor of pure brand "power" - it seems to be much more subtle.
Since it's changing from day to day, it seems reasonable to conclude that Google is testing potentially branded searches to see how often they are truly branded searches. That is, when someone searches [reef], how often do they go to Reef.com, and how often do they go to the Wikipedia page about reefs?
Agreed Dr Pete. I don't think 7-result SERPs are just linked to brand names because the example I cited above was for a top non-brand keyword.
I think it has to do with branding and the competition for that brand term. I've been to and fro on my brand term 'SEO Hacker' and it doesn't show my sitelinks. I think it's because that there is a website seohackers.org competing with my brand 'seo hacker' - perhaps this could help you pin down what it is that triggers that 7-SERP with sitelinks result.
Thanks for the Post, I really wish to call you as Dr. Pete more than Dear Pete
you are really a leader in providing most important info. I have checked many of the examples given with your post. Still having many doubts about the difference in listing pages according to the location change. Some time it shows just 5 results. For example when I searched for "BizandLegis" with Google.co.in it gives 7 results and when searched with Google.com it gives 5 results (not structured like table just link beneath the main page description)
I think the sub listing pages are changing according to their improvements in SERP.
Like if a sub page named "foreclosure defense" improves its SERP or page ranks,
I understands (not clarified ) that more powerful pages lists at the top. I can Give another example and it is very familiar also.
Check this Image : https://www.bizandlegis.com/legal-answers/IMAGES/matt-cutts-results.jpg
( Search result for Matt Cutts - Google web spam team head )
When we search for Matt Cutts in Google, his blog comes at the first result just before his home page URL result. His home page URL has Google PR -5 (187 OSE links-SEOMoz) and Blog URL got PR -6 (9K OSE links -SEOMoz)
Similarly, it seems like Matt Cutts has transferred the power of home page to his blog URL (it is done by adding a header tag pointing its Link to his blog.) He says like "You probably want my blog" which is in h1 and he has given hyperlink to the word "Blog") What here happens is, when a bot crawl his home page, definitely go to his blog URL. The points and mark achieved by his website will be ooze into his blog URL and gathered there. The power of 24K unique domain links will be pointed to his Blog.
These all doubts are remaining uncleared because; just see another research
In the website moz.com the PR is 2 and moz.com/rand/ got PR 5
But here its is amazing, It is based on its power achieved only by those pointing links (home page show 20 OSE links) and moz.com/rand shows (286 OSE inks)
Confusion vs Confusion
I think a hard look at a wide variety of queries would be telling. I think people might be able to start connecting some dots based on this. For me, the variation in SERPs is the curious thing here, if the hypothesis is that Google is trying to establish certain identity criteria that "triggers" a 7 result SERP. It certainly seems in the grand scheme of things that Google is attempting to identify, label, categorize, and profile entities, whether these are companies, blogs, or authors (of course there is a potential for major downside with this). But just look at Eric Schmidt's recent statements about how he would elevate you in SERPs for being verified by Google (and even said he'd like every user in some kind of government database). They want to catalog everything. Anyway, my hunch is that this trend definitely ties in somehow. Is this just Google experimenting with their long term vision? Probably going out on a limb, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Thank you so much for posting, this is topic is so very relevant and interesting for me! :-)
Just in these last 2 weeks I had a site go live I'd optimised over Xmas and right away we got 7 entries on Page One for one of the top keywords. SEVEN. Never has this happened to me for the one client for a top keyword! The client was understandably ecstatic because he didn't think it would happen so fast for so many results on Page One.
I tracked these everyday for a week or so and still SEVEN.. Then just yesterday they dropped suddenly down to FOUR. But hey, that's still great for a site that was not at all within the top 10 pages of Google for this keyword previously. So I'm a happy SEO nerd.
Had similar site sit at top keyword at position 1,2 and 3 on Page One for 12 months. Then almost exactly to the day a year later we get site links for this site for same top keyword. I think this is evidence of your point: "There is nearly a perfect, positive correlation between 7-result SERPs and expanded site-links. Whatever engine is driving one also very likely drives the other."
Thank you.
One thing I think you have to be careful about is getting clients too tied to see those expanded site-links. Not only is it hard to control, but they come and go, sometimes daily. They're nice to have, but don't count on them.
We noticed that the site links fluctuated with just 3-4 SERP entries for a few weeks before "settling in" for the long term. We are located in Australia, so our client's expectations are probably lower as they might be in the US due to lack of education. For them to even get to Page One is a very positive outcome from their point of view.
Great post thanks for solving the secrets behind the 7- result SERP. But some results come up with latest news page like if you search for “McDonalds USA” on no.2 there is News for McDonalds USA. Why Google don’t count news in 7-result SERP as he do for images, if we count it too it becomes 8-result SERP. Do you know the reason behind that?
This 7 Results SERP is quite confusing.I did a lot of research on this when it was launched last year, but still haven't got the right answer.Take the example of few USA Airlines like "Air Evac", "AirNow", "Air Sunshine" Google displays 7 results when you search for these brand terms, but if you search for "AirTran Airways" Google displays regular 10 results. Same if you search for Seomoz, seobook, clickz, seo chat, seoroundtable Google displays 7, but if you search for phoenixrealm Google displays regular 10 results.
what a pain! Just when you think you got it... Google throws a wrench at you!!
"If you can dodge a wrench", you can rank! lol
that's the beauty of Google and SEO Industry.
Almost all of my clients have a 7 SERP Result but mostly not for our targeted keywords... more brand-associated keywords.Currently i see a lot more 4 SERP results for our keywords or competitors then anything else, and from my personal research they tend be from the navigation bar or sitemap or even as Google reads it, internal links.I'd suggest to anyone trying to get a 4 or 7 page SERP then make sure your navigation bar is optimised, your sitemap is efficiently created and you have good internal linking for the Homepage. That's what tends to get us our 4 or 7 result, but even then it seems to widly vary which pages actually get listed, we have managed to test it efficiently on 1 of our clients to get the correct pages we are wanting to be in the 7 page SERP via having a no-dropdown navigation bar which has higher frequency for said navigation bar on the sitemap then the other pages.
Hey Charles, I think you might be referring more to expanded site links? Definitely a lot of mystery there as well, great information on getting these to display correctly!
No problem and I was referring to Homepage > Targeted page links as "Internal Links" - that creates a logic for the Googlebot to say these pages are relevant (same with Sitemap priorities and frequencies).
I do agree with your thoughts, breadcrumb is definitely playing role in 4-7 SERP result.
Well amazed these secrets are really helpful in SERP point of view
Nice post. I've seen the 7 result SERPs come up for me a number of times. I'm glad to see some research as to when and why it is triggered.
Great Post. It is very helpful and informative for me. Thank you.
Thanks for the post. What I can tell based on my experience with clients is that getting the 7 results SERP depends, at least partially, on how strong you are as an entity, and I believe local links are important here. One of our customers, a big online retailer based in Spain, has its website prepared for many european countries (including Germany) and the US, and it gets the 7 result SERP in Spain of course, the US and other european countries, but not in Germany. I believe this is because it lacks links from local sites.
For me 7 SERPs is new thing. Thanks for the information.
Hi.. Pete
Thanks for this great post!
Ajay
Hi,
Pete, nice informative post, Thanks
Ali
That's the beauty in Google SERP to keep on bring change in Algorithms to give unexpected shocks. But it will make us to think differently according to the changes made.
Hi,
I got really impressed with your post Dr. Pete, I love the detailed information about intention to up and down Google SERP algorithms. You have nicely written it with the help of screenshots.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Dr. Peter,
When Hummingbird came into existence, search results have changed a lot. It became more precise and there are a lot of speculations that keywords will no longer be very significant in SEO. Anyway, this 7-result SERP is also puzzling. Google has something to do with this. It might be a part of a larger algorithm update.
I don't know if there is a "straight forward" equation or formula that can be applied to try and understand this. It seems very odd to me that sometimes when I'm obviously searching for some kind of company, it refuses to show the 7 pack while other times, it takes up most of the real estate above the fold in the SERPs.
Very strange.
My question is if anyone knows (and I apologize if this was asked/answered already) why the 7 pack isn't shown in some cases).
Thanks.
Thomas
Great piece of information... relevant now as well. Thanks Dr Pete
Hmmm... some fascinating insights here. I think all SEO professionals should pay more attention to things like local search, rich-snippets, and other things that may alter the organic search landscape. Also, I bet that having an XML sitemap submitted to Google can only increase the chance that your listing, for a given query, would produce site links. I'm eager to see how things will move in the future. Nice post.
Excellent post with interesting data Pete. The 7-serp makes page 1 real estate even more valuable. I guess for healthcare and occasions and gift categories, less is not more. Your discussion about entities and the "entities connection" is particularly interesting, especially as it relates to user intent. I think this is going to be an emerging trend in Google as evidenced by the knowledge graph introduction and some other things that I have heard from Dan Russell of Google recently.Thanks for sharing.
7 SERPs have always been a pain for me, choosing whether or not to do a case study and is it worth it has been a real problem for my interests over the last 2 years or so.. I have yet to see a large enough effect of 7 SERPs to invest the time and effort into them, I may work on a case study properly.
Thanks for the information though, another great article - WASSUP DOC.
I experimented with trying to get 7 results SERP's to show up as well.
No different then your research showed Google will give site-links to a non-brand website but instead it's more of an entity.
My experiment was more theorizing on how to create a 7 result SERP. Google within just 3 days applied site links and a 7 result SERP for two of the websites we tested. One of them (PR 0/10) since has fluctuated back and forth between a 10 result and a 7 while the other (PR 1/10) has remained consistently a 7 result SERP.
It is interesting to see that travel is an overwhelming favorite of a 7 result SERP.
Has anybody tried to create a 7 result SERP for any/each of those categories? I would be interested to learn about different techniques people are using to try and create a 7 result SERP and how the techniques would vary on a categorical basis.
I also think the push is for Big Brands and this will eventually cause a lot of small businesses to have to use Adwords. There is a lot of interesting data here to prove this. There are so many factors to how a new business will be able to get into the 7 results.
Very good stuff here Dr. Pete. Thanks so much for sharing it.
Great post. This was a very interesting article, I really liked the SERP percentages category table. I wasn't aware there was already this much information about this phenomenon, and I wasn't familiar with all the examples you posted here. Thanks a lot for sharing this post DR. Pete.
As always appreciate the data behind all the work you do, Dr. Pete. Is there a possibility that sites using microformats/Schema will have an edge? Looking at the above screenshot, there is nothing that especially stands out in the SERPs. One element that seems to be missing (possibly just due to the length and what you wanted to include) is videos. Did you see any inclusions of videos in the SERPs?
Because there is no huge conclusion, we should essentially move forward as normal. Garnish natural links that include varied queries and brand mentions. It will be interesting to see what data comes up about what ratios/mixes sites end up with in their profiles. Do you think that could end up being "industry"-specific?
I've never seen a SERP with expanded site-links and a video thumbnail, but of course, there are a lot of SERPs I've never seen. I don't think this is directly related to on-page cues or microformats (unlike, say, breadcrumb links in SERs).
Interesting data Dr Pete.
What we have to keep in mind regarding SERPs changes/evolution is also the right hand side money machine: Google's paid search ads.
All SERPs changes are (most probably) tested and analyzed based on their neutral or positive effect of Google ads revenue. Naturally Google wants to provide better SERPs but it needs to increase to their search revenue as well.
Some SERPs changes may only be completely understood if we'd know their effect on google's paid ads revenue.
I love this data. Lovely, lovely data.
It is interesting to see that this phenomenon is not limited to branded terms as I had assumed. I had regularly encountered it in results where the SERPs were crowded by a single domain having multiple page 1 entries. I wonder whether this is a factor at all now (though certainly it is addressed when the 7-results setup is enforced).
I'm a hug fan of the "entity" hypothesis, it ties in very logically with other signals from Goolge about brand authority, Google + business pages and the like.
Great post!
Thanks Pete for this post, because it helps me and confirms what I was experiencing with a couple of clients, especially in the Travel & Tourism niche.36,2% is surely such a big percentage to justify consistent loss of organic traffic for the simple reason that ranking 8th in a seven results SERP means, now, have fallen in the second page.More over, if we think that quite surely in that niche we have a big % of local search box and - quite surely - the influence of Venice in the organic blue links, what a quite hard vertical travel has become lately!
Finally, I found extremely interesting the connection between Entity and 7 results pages. Not that I wasn't aware of that correlation, but because of what you speculate in relation to how dynamically Google may determine if an Entity is still to be considered an Entity. I think that people like Bill Slawki could dig more and better than me about this topic.
Great overview.
1. What about Google Shopping - that's another item pushing organic down, right? At least when doing branded searches. A search for 'Dell laptop' gives me shopping results from various retailers between paid and organic. For non-branded searches i get it on the right rail.
2. Is there data available how much the CTR changes when more content appears in the upper area? I know local performs well, and product listings get a few clicks as well, so the first organic positions will likely have much lower click through rates, right?
We'll be publishing data on how far #1 gets pushed down (on average) very soon. CTR is tough, because the variability is huge these days.
Thanks Pete! The "7 n 7" SERP cocktail makes it more difficult to compete and is still a pain to figure out
Great post Pete!
I also noticed that first result in 7 result serp have sitelinks.
In my opinion, Google is trying to make big brands even stronger and force small businesses to use Google places and adwords.
Hi Bojan, not so sure about the emphasis on big brands, I think it's more about quality, optimised content. The example that I cited of the site that received site links within 12 months was a small business site with only 17 pages. This is the "little site that could" and it has stayed consistently at #1 beating bigger sites from bigger brands. One site it's beating even has 7,000+ pages and it's lingering at the bottom of Page One.
Big brands are able to invest for long term campaigns with separate marketing wing including, SEO, Social media person, content writer etc. But small business owners will try to hire SEO service providers instead of deploying a in house SEO. There is huge difference in doing three type of SEO like buying a seo service from a company, deploying a expert in house seo and finding a freelance seo. I have gone through all these stages. In seo companies there will be experienced SEO who mainly do on page works only (those may be perfect - no over optimization no broken links, no crawl errors, good loading time etc ) But there can be a wing with junior SEO or trainees, or link builders who do directory submission, article submission, forum posting, comment posting etc without knowing about why they build links, what is high quality links, what is low quality links etc.
In case of posting an In house SEO, there can be some sort of problems.
In case of freelancers also similar problems may arise
So finding a responsible SEO expert, Company or Freelancer who has good history can bring the better results.
Yes you are right, finding a responsible SEO updated with most recent information can do a lot. All other easy listing offers and quick resulting tricks are cheating with spam activities
Kerala tour thanks for your comment. It is very difficult to get a responsible SEO. Nobody can under estimate also
Would be really interesting to see how the link profil of those "7-SERP-Brands" looks like. Maybe domain authority is not the right metrik to look at. Maybe they even have a certain set of backlink-sources in common (like there is a certain set of websites that google uses to pull shopping seller ratings).
I think the extended sitelinks + 7 SERPs might be a really interesting thing in terms of reputation management for brands, so every info is appreciated :)
Brilliant post. Seriously.
Nice work as always, Pete!
I'm going to throw my hat into the ring and suggest this as the trigger:
click-thru-and-don't-bounce-back rate To clarify, I'm suggesting that Google is tracking the % of people who click a result for a given query and don't return to the results to click another. If that % exceeds some threshold, then maybe it triggers the 7-result serp.
Go on now....shoot that full of holes! :-D
Thanks as always Dr. Pete for the insightful information. The big boys (and girls) are methodically gaining the top spots, making it harder and harder for the "little guy or gal" to find and stay in the 7-Result.
I often refer to this as the Google's move from pure search engine to popularity engine. I have mixed feelings about this.
PULP-O-MIZER: thank you for telling me about this wonderful thing.
Haha - I got to that part of the post. Went to the site and ended up playing with PULP-O-MIZER for 30mins and forgot what I was doing in the first place!
Interesting post as ever Dr. Pete with some great data.
I am going to file this under: be aware of it, but don't worry about it for now. :)