How to grab a bigger piece of the SERP

Learn how to leverage the additional SERP features that Google shows in the search results 

Get more traffic to your site by getting more SERP real estate.

In this article, we take a deep dive into the additional SERP features that Google shows in its results.

We explore what the most common ones are, look at the trends and industry-specific variance, and show you what can be done to leverage these prime pieces of SERP real estate.

Contents

 

1. What are the top SERP features in each Niche? 
2. Answer the SERP
3. Related Searches
4. Site Links
5. People Also Asked
6. Reviews
7. Images
8. Image Pack
9. Video
10. Local Pack
11. Knowledge Panel
12. Popular Products
13. Video Carousel
14. Featured Snippet
15. Summary
16. References and Resources  

What are the top SERP features in each Niche?

Let’s start by addressing the percentage of SERPs that have no additional SERP features.

As you can see from the chart below,  it is not a lot at all so ignore SERP features at your peril!

The only category with a noteworthy percentage is online communications, and even that is fairly low. 

Now let’s look at what the big hitters are:

Next, we rank these SERP features in order of how frequently they are displayed in the SERPs

SERP Feature	% Display
Related searches	95.50%
Sitelinks	68.04%
People also ask	56.23%
Reviews	54.77%
Image pack	54.32%
Image	45.07%
Video	22.64%
Local pack	20.28%
Knowledge panel	19.78%
Popular products	14.62%
Video carousel	9.24%
Featured snippet	5.41%

Before we jump deep into the analysis of each SERP feature and break it down by category, it’s worthwhile considering what to do when armed with this information.

So it follows, that we should “answer the SERP”.

Answer the SERP

In SEO we talk a lot about answering the SERP.

But what does answering the SERP mean?

What is meant by that is comprehensively answering and providing resources for all of the info that is present on a specific SERP. 

This is far more than the traditional SEO approach of just concentrating on a specific keyword.

If there is a video in the SERP and you don’t have one on your page you are not fully answering the SERP.

We also talk a lot about reading the SERP intent [12]. This is different than answering the SERP, although it is aligned with that.

It is also different than search intent. Ryan Stewart of Webris [2] and The BluePrint Training [19] coined the term SERP intent [12].

What this means is what Google thinks the intent of the searcher is, hopefully, this is aligned with the search intent, and hopefully so is your content.

I like to give the example – if the search results are a list of 10 how-to blog posts you are never going to get an e-commerce product page to rank, even with great SEO. 

This is because the content is not aligned with the SERP intent [12]. This is where modern SEO differs from traditional SEO.

Related Searches

 

1. What is a related search?
2. How common is a related search SERP Feature?
3. What is the trend in related search SERP Features?
4. How do you influence related search SERP Features?

What is a related search? 

A related search is exactly what it sounds like, it is a list of related searches to the search query you used. The related search shown below is more of a rich related search that contains extra features. By paying attention to the related searches and catering to those also you stand a better chance of fully answering the SERP.

You could argue this is a hybrid SERP feature or an enhanced rich search feature. I expect these to continue to grow in use and variety.

How common is a related search in the SERPs?

As you can see from the chart below, related searches appear in almost all SERPs. 

What’s the trend in related searches

The current trend in related searches is pretty flat hovering around 95.5% with minimal fluctuations.

How do you influence related searches?

There is not much you can do to influence related searches, they are driven by all of the related searches that people do around the term that you searched for.

The reasoning behind this is that people often refine their searches, so presenting the related searches should likely help you find what you are looking for more effectively.

Approximately 15% of all web searches are new [7] so the related searches are useful but it may also be the case that you need a new specific unique query.

Site Links

 

1. What is a Site Link SERP Result?
2. How common are Site Link SERP features?
3. What is the trend in Site Link SERP features?
4. How do you influence Site Link SERP features?

What is a Site Link SERP Result? 

Site links are expanded subheading links under your main organic listing. These gain you significant SERP real estate and additional options to help searchers find relevant sections on your site.

How common are Site Links in the SERPs?

Site links are one of the most common SERP features and the good news is there are things you can do to influence them! Not only that but you get a much bigger piece of the pie if you utilize them.

On average Site Links have 68% SERP coverage with the home and garden category being as low as 52% and the games category being as high as 81%.

What’s the trend in Site Link SERP Results?

Site links have a very slight positive trend. They are hovering around the 68% coverage rate.

How do you influence Site Link SERP Results?

By adding some specific code and schema you can help influence, but not guarantee, site links. Adding in breadcrumb navigation and schema also helps influence but again, not guarantee, site links in your SERP.

[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home"}]},

{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://stolber.com.com/#website","url":"https://stolber.com/","name":"STOLBER Digital Marketing Agency","description":"STOLBER Digital Marketing Agency optimize your web site to be fast, secure and efficient so that users and search engines will love it.","publisher":{"@id":"https://stolber.com/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://stolber.com/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},

Here you can see the validation in Google Search Console on items that are eligible for Google’s rich results.

For further information on these features and other structured data and rich SERP results view Google’s documentation here. [4] 

People Also Ask

 

1. What is a People Also Ask SERP Feature?
2. How common are People Also Ask SERP features?
3. What is the trend in People Also Ask SERP features?
4. How do you influence People Also Ask SERP features?

What is a People Also Ask SERP Feature? 

The People Also Ask is like free keyword research! There is a handy tool called AlsoAsked [9] that serves up People Also Asked results in a very useful way. We use this as part of our content briefs for certain types of content.

Not surprisingly the People Also Ask (PAA) section lists questions or queries that people also ask relating to the main search query. This goes back to answering the SERP.

When you consider that people will refine their initial search query multiple times [11] before finding the information they are looking for it makes perfect sense to display this information.

Google is telling you what else you should be covering in your content relating to a keyword you are targeting, you should listen to it!

How common are People Also Ask SERP Features?

People also ask coverage is about 56% with the Home & Graden & online communications categories hovering at just about 40% whereas computers & electronics are just under 80%. You can see there is a fair bit of category divergence here.

What’s the trend in People Also Ask?

There is a relatively steep downward trend in People Also Ask SERP features with a recent notable step change in their coverage, At the time of writing the coverage is 56%.

How do you influence People Also Ask?

We can’t influence the People Also Ask queries, but you can use that information to influence how your content will be shown for some of the queries or PAA sections.

Below is a screenshot from the excellent AlsoAsked.com [9] tool that shows a nice graphical representation of the PAA queries. This data is also very timely and quite reactive to news and new search topics.

Image – from AlsoAsked.com – great visualization of the PAA section

We asked Mark Williams-Cook of Candour and creator of AlsoAsked [9] about PAA directly, and here is what he said;

“Something particularly unique about PAA data is how fresh it is. When we get big news stories, you can see the shift in intent shown within the PAAs sometimes within an hour. “

“It is important to note that PAAs are part of the way Google learns through induction, by essentially asking the user a question, so they are likely to be around for a long while too as far as SERP features go.”

“You can read more here on 7 must-see Google Search ranking documents in antitrust trial exhibits [15] that divulge some of the information SEOs have known or understood for some time.”

Also, read Mark’s article on Search Engine Land on Google’s shifting approach to AI content: An in-depth look [14]. Google has something akin to a site quality score [18] which is used in post-ranking feature generation. This site quality score affects how likely you are to gain certain types of SERP features.

Reviews

 

1. What are Review SERP features?
2. How common are Review SERP features?
3. What is the trend in Review SERP features?
4. How do you influence Review SERP features?

What is a Review SERP Feature? 

The reviews SERP feature [10] is an enhanced SERP result that shows the review stars, aggregate rating, and number of reviews that it is based on.

How common is a Review SERP Feature?

On average reviews are shown about 54% of the time but as you can see there is huge category variation here. Laws & Government feature just over 25% coverage of review however Food & Drink as well as Home & Garden are over 80% coverage.

What’s the trend in Reviews?

Review SERP features are on a fairly steady and shallow positive coverage rate. It’s always good to show reviews and get rewarded for good reviews so showing that these types of features are on the increase is good.

How do you influence Review SERP Features?

The strength of your Google Business Profile and having review schema markup help to influence gaining review SSERP features but do not guarantee it. It is also prudent to implement a third-party review source directly into your website. This is helpful, but again does not guarantee that you will gain review SERP features.

Images

It’s important here to make the distinction between image SERP features and Image Pack results. Although very similar they are different SERP features.

 

1. What are Image SERP features?
2. How common are Image SERP features?
3. What is the trend in Image SERP features?
4. How do you influence Image SERP features?

What are Image SERP Features?

A picture says 1000 words so it makes sense you would include them in search results!

There are specific image-only search functions in Google but that doesn’t stop the big G from putting them in the main SERPs where it makes sense to.

Images are often neglected in search and there are lots of ways you can leverage and enhance them, image SERPs are one of those ways.

How common are Image SERP Features?

Across all categories images are shown in 45% of the SERPs however as you can see from the chart below there is significant variance across different categories. Finance is down at 9% and Home and Garden is up at 89%.

This is probably one of the clearest examples of SERP intent.

It’s quite unlikely that you can convey appropriate meaning for financial-based queries with an image, however, you can show someone what they are searching for in the home and garden search category.

For the most part, Google understands your search and presents you with a set of results with multiple features aimed at fully satisfying your query.

What’s the trend in Image SERP Features?

There was a fairly recent significant ~5% step change but before and after that the trend has been quite flat.

How do you influence Image SERP Features?

There are a few things you can do to help influence getting Image SERP features. Using ALT attributes – often called ALT tags, this is the alternative text that helps describe the image. These are useful for SEO in general and are often some of the lowest-hanging SEO fruit.

Using an Image XML Sitemap is often neglected. People regularly use XML sitemaps for their HTML pages but you can utilize the same method for images.

The textual content around an image helps give context to what the image is about and therefore gives a higher chance of it being surfaced as an image SERP.

The image being a link is also a significant factor as this clearly shows its importance and highly relevant to the content being linked.

Image Pack

 

1. What are Image Pack SERP features?
2. How common are Image Pack SERP features?
3. What is the trend in Image Pack SERP features?
4. How do you influence Image Pack SERP features?

What are Image Pack SERP Features?

Image pack SERP features are multiple images returned rather than a single image.

How common are Image Pack SERP Features?

Image Pack results display about 54% of the time, notably, there is less variance across categories than the single image results. 

It is also interesting to see that finance has such a high percentage of image pack results. Autos and Bueaty & Fitness categories have the most coverage with Image Pack SERP results.

What’s the trend in Image Pack SERP Features?

Image Pack results cover about 54% of the SERPs. There was a significant ~7% step change and it has been stable before and after that. 

There was almost an inversion event at the end of November 2023 where single Image SERPs went down and Image Pack SERPs went up, however, the category distribution is quite different.

How do you influence Image Pack SERP Features?

Many of the same elements that influence image SERP feature results also influence image pack results. Logically, pages with more images would stand a better chance of gaining image pack SERP features.

Video (video is now big)

 

1. What is a Video SERP feature?
2. How common are Video SERP features?
3. What is the trend in Video SERP features?
4. How do you influence Video SERP features?

What is a Video SERP Feature?

Well, if a picture says 1000 words then a video must show you even more right?

Video content has its specific search engine, YouTube, which interestingly is the second most used search engine [6] of all by a good long way.

Google has its own specific video search results page too, however, there are a lot of SERPs where Video content can be displayed.

How common are Video SERP Features?

Video SERP content covers about 23% of the SERPs across all categories. There is significant category variance in how many video SERPs are shown. 

Not too surprisingly the Games category has about 50% coverage where whereas the Law & Government category has only 7% coverage. 

What’s the trend in Video SERP Features?

There was a large ~8% step change at the algorithm update at the end of November 2023 [5]  however the average coverage of video in the SERPs has been stable before and after this event.

How do you influence Video SERP Features?

Videos typically have a significant amount of metadata and other structured markup data available. 

It behooves you to leverage this to the fullest.

Adding chapters with chapter links is a helpful feature and these sometimes even show in the SERPs.

Providing closed captions in a .scc format or other recognized format will help the video be understood as text and will be time synchronized to the video giving further ability for search engines to understand the video. 

If a clear relationship can be made in time and context and there is a linkable segment to the video, this greatly increases your chances of having video content returned in a SERP.

Local Pack

 

1. What are Local Pack SERP features?
2. How common are Local Pack SERP features?
3. What is the trend in Local Pack SERP features?
4. How do you influence Local Pack SERP features?

What is the Local Pack?

The local pack or map pack as it is often referred to is local business listing information which is usually added in as a SERP feature on top of the regular organic results. This takes into account the proximity of your search to the business, the name of the business, and the aggregate rating of the business as primary criteria.

These are very commonly used when there is a navigational search intent.

How common are Local Pack SERP Features?

Local pack results are served on average on 32% of SERPs. There is a large category diversion however which makes sense. As these results are very localized some terms and categories logically have more or less localized results. Books & literature along with Games have minimal ~1% coverage which makes sense as they are generally not localized searches, whereas health, beauty & fitness, and Food and Drink have between 38-55% SERP coverage. So in some categories, local pack SERPs are very significant.

What’s the trend with the Local Pack?

The trend is pretty flat at around 20.25% across all categories.

How do you influence the Local Pack?

Local pack results are heavily influenced by the Google Business Profile (GBP) which in terms is primarily influenced by;

 

1. • Business name in the title of the profile

• • Proximity to the location where the search occurs

• • Review quantity and aggregate rating

There are many more things you can do to influence this too.

Activity on your GBP page is something that helps to serve it in more SERPs, we advocate for treating the GBP page more like a social media channel than a set-it-and-forget-it.

Make sure you have added appropriate services and check for new relevant categories (new ones come up from time to time). Also, new features are added regularly for specific niches so it makes sense to do a regular check-up.

Making sure you have a local business schema and appropriate localized information on your website also helps here.

Knowledge Panel

 

1. What are Knowledge Panel SERP features?
2. How common are Knowledge Panel SERP features?
3. What is the trend in Knowledge Panel  SERP features?
4. How do you influence Knowledge Panel  SERP features?

What is the Knowledge Panel?

The knowledge panel is a type of search result that shows in a box on the right side of the SERPs. It shows usually when people search for a presence, such as a  place, organization, person, etc. It helps us to get a quick summary of facts, URLs, images, and other relevant details on a topic based on the search engine’s understanding. 

Here’s what the Knowledge Panel looks like:

How Common is the Knowledge Panel?

The knowledge panel is shown in about 20% of SERPs across all categories, however, there is a stand-out category Arts and Entertainment where the knowledge panel is shown in about 65% of SERPs.

What’s the trend in the Knowledge Panel?

The knowledge panel is on a slight downward trend.

How do you influence the Knowledge Panel?

Knowledge panels [13] are always generated automatically by using information from Google’s Knowledge Graph which collects data from various sources like Wikipedia, Crunchbase, LinkedIn, etc. 

Here we can define a few steps that will make you clear how Google generates a Knowledge panel as well as how you influence it: 

 

• • Identification of entities within the search query.

• • Selection of a suitable knowledge panel template based on the entity type.

• • Fill in relevant information within the knowledge panel template.

• • Merging search results with the generated knowledge panel in search engine results pages (SERPs).

• • Images featured in knowledge panels are sourced from diverse resources chosen by Google.

The knowledge panels also update automatically based on the information changes from the owner side, directly from the entity in the panel, or from general user feedback. If you or your business is represented in a knowledge panel, you have the option to claim it and propose modifications to ensure accuracy. 

So, there is no doubt to influence the Knowledge panel you may focus on sharing your entity’s information properly so that Google can pick them to show it as a knowledge panel. 

Popular Products

1. What are Popular Product  SERP features?
2. How common are Popular Product  SERP features?
3. What is the trend in Popular Product  SERP features?
4. How do you influence Popular Product  SERP features?

What is a Popular Product SERP Result? 

Popular products SERP results are a range of items relevant to your search query that are accessible for purchase and these are different from Google Shopping ads.

This Popular Product SERP feature delivers valuable options to shoppers, facilitating a faster and more comprehensive shopping experience.

How common is a Popular Product SERP Result?

The popular products SERP feature is shown in about 15% of SERPs across all categories however there is a huge variation in this between different categories which makes sense. Home & Garden has a popular product shown in ~65% of the SERPs and Business & Industrial is not far behind at 58%. Jobs & Education is nonexistent as is Finance, Law & Government and News.

What’s the trend in Popular Products?

The trend is popular product SERPS is pretty flat with a very subtle linear uptrend, although note the small Y-axis changes here, this is a very subtle trend.

How do you influence Popular Product SERP Results?

You may follow the below instructions to influence Popular Product SERP Results [14]:

 

• • Upload your product feed with Google Merchant Center.

• • Use product schema markup properly with structured data.

• • Ensure essential product attributes in your feed: id, title, description, brand, link, image_link, price, etc.

• • Use relevant keywords in your product titles.

• • Competitively set product prices to boost click-through rates.

• • Ensure high-quality product images as this feature emphasizes visuals.

Video Carousel

1. What are Video Carousel SERP features?
2. How common are Video Carousel  SERP features?
3. What is the trend in Video Carousel SERP features?
4. How do you influence Video Carousel SERP features?

What is the Video Carousel SERP Feature?

The video carousel SERP feature displays a set of videos related to a user’s search query. It provides the top of the search results that allow users to easily browse through multiple video options without leaving the search page.

Here’s what the Video Carousel looks like:

How common is a Video Carousel Result?

Video Carousel search features are shown in about 9% of SERPs. Arts and Entertainment has about 19.5% coverage whereas finance has about 1% SERP coverage.

What’s the trend with Video Carousel Results?

There was a pretty big step change at the end of November where we saw a big shuffle in SERP features. Since then the trend has been pretty flat at around 9% SERP coverage.

How do you influence Video Carousel Results?

You may follow the below instructions to influence Video Carousel SERP Results [15]:

 

• • Produce informative videos, and try to host them on platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, etc. 

• • When hosting videos on your website, implement the VideoObject schema markup to provide Google with information about the videos on your site.

• • Make sure your produced videos are original and relevant even contribute value to the user’s experience.

• • A catchy thumbnail image and video title may increase your click-through rate for your website. It will be a great weapon for your branding too.  

Featured Snippet

1. What are Featured Snippet SERP features?
2. How common are Featured Snippet SERP features?
3. What is the trend in Featured Snippet SERP features?
4. How do you influence Featured Snippet SERP features?

What is a Featured Snippet? 

A featured snippet is a rich search feature that displays a snippet of text from your site directly in the search results. This gave rise to 0 click searches [3] which meant that Google was directly providing your content in their search results. This has led to lots of concern among publishers.

How common are Featured Snippets?

Featured snippets are shown in about 5.5% of SERPs across all categories. The Health category has the highest SERP coverage at 17% with several other categories at 16.5%. Food & Drink has the lowest coverage of all categories at 1%.

What’s the trend with Featured Snippets?

The trend of featured snippets in the SERPs has been pretty steady hovering around the 5.5% mark.

How do you influence Featured Snippets?

Winning a featured snippet is significant as it can get you a large piece of SERP real estate at the top of the SERP even if you are not the first organic ranking.

There is no guarantee of getting a featured snippet but there are some things you can do to influence it included;

• • A concise 45-55 word summary near the top of your document.

• • Relevant headings near the summary.

• • A bulleted or numbered list.

Note there are different types of featured snippets. Generally lists near the 45-55 word summary help to win a featured snippet. [8]

Summary 

In this article we have taken a deep dive into the different types of SERP features, how common they are, what their trends are, and how you can influence them.

You can use this information to aid your SEO strategy by looking at what different types of SERP features are present across the keywords you are targeting and what elements you can add and modify on your page and in your content to capture many additional SERP features.

References and Resources

In this article, we have used Semrush Sensor [1] as a source.

Source: https://www.semrush.com/sensor/ [1]

The Semrush sensor [1] is a handy tool that gives a SERP volatility score in several different manners and breaks down the change and trend of the different SERP features. It is important to watch this regularly and be prepared for any changes in the SERPs.

 

1. Semrush Sensor
2. https://webris.org/Webris
3. Dustin McManus – Admarketplace.com – Zero-Click Search & Featured Snippets – 2023 
4. Google – Search Central –  Structured data and rich SERP results – 2023 
5. Barry Schwartz – search engine land – Google November 2023 core update – 2023
6. Jason Wise – earthweb – Youtube search engine market share – 2023
7. Ogi Djuraskovic – first site guide – Google search statistics – 2023
8. Nikolai Boroda – Semrush – Featured snippet optimization – 2023
9. Mark Williams Cook – Alsoasked.com – 2023
10. Semrush – Knowledgebase –  Review SERP Features – 2023
11. Marcus Tober – Semrush – Refine search query from initial query – 2022
12. Ryan Stewart-  The Blueprint Training – SERP Intent – 2019
13. Semrush – Knowledgebase –  Knowledge Panel SERP Result – 2023 
14. Semrush – Knowledgebase –  Popular Product SERP Result – 2023
15. Semrush – Knowledgebase –  Video Carousel SERP Result – 2023
16. Google’s shifting approach to AI content: An in-depth look
17. 7 must-see Google Search ranking documents in antitrust trial exhibits
18. Google Site Quality Score
19. The BluePrint Training