Google’s recent announcement of the local “Carousel” has proven to be a major advancement in how search is being displayed. Due to the more visual nature of us humans, the Carousel offers various channels for the users to discover information and brands in a more visual and interactive manner.
Understanding How the Visual Carousel for Local Search Impacts Clicks, Rankings, and Your Overall SEO Strategy
Google’s Carousel could be a major shake-up for local search marketing campaigns. Although the Carousel does not show for every search, our research indicates that the Carousel layout is most likely to appear for search queries where user interaction – such as reviews and photo uploads – are common. We believe this is likely to expand to other search results in the near future.
How Carousel Works
The Carousel view displays a horizontal strip of images at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) that slides from left to right (if the quantity of results warrants it) and is highlighted with a black background. Previously, when searching for restaurants, bars or other nearby places, local results were displayed as a vertical text list, typically listing about five to seven businesses, in a fairly normal and even somewhat boring fashion.
The new Carousel format includes many more listings, and is much more eye-catching with rich information for each business listed, such as an image, number of reviews, review score, average costs, and type of food.
Typically we see that Google continues to push organic listings farther down on the SERP. Organic results are getting less real estate due to expanded coverage for the knowledge graph results (just try searching “acne treatment”) and product listing ads (PLAs). However, the local Carousel listings are located on top of the page, above paid search, knowledge graph results, and organic listings.
Furthermore, the new horizontal design displays about 30 percent more business listings and it covers about 40 percent less vertical space, leaving more room for organic listings than previous local results. Even more local results can be displayed once the user moves the map to his or her desired areas. This gives local SEO a much larger opportunity to dominate the search results page.
Impact on Click-throughs in the Carousel
Because search results are shown horizontally and not vertically, traditional ranking CTRs may no longer apply. In a recent study, published on LocalU.org, it was discovered that the No. 1 local ranking position did not always get the highest amount of clicks. In the test, the actions of 83 people were tracked on the new layout.
The results showed that 48 percent of the total clicks were on Carousel results and only 14.5 percent of the clicks were on the map. Additionally, the eighth Carousel result had the most clicks and the third Carousel result had the second most clicks.
[Source : http://www.covario.com/2013/07/googles-local-carousel-a-new-form-of-discovery-marketing/#fbid=Qxr9oXvOtlT ]
Understanding How the Visual Carousel for Local Search Impacts Clicks, Rankings, and Your Overall SEO Strategy
Google’s Carousel could be a major shake-up for local search marketing campaigns. Although the Carousel does not show for every search, our research indicates that the Carousel layout is most likely to appear for search queries where user interaction – such as reviews and photo uploads – are common. We believe this is likely to expand to other search results in the near future.
How Carousel Works
The Carousel view displays a horizontal strip of images at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) that slides from left to right (if the quantity of results warrants it) and is highlighted with a black background. Previously, when searching for restaurants, bars or other nearby places, local results were displayed as a vertical text list, typically listing about five to seven businesses, in a fairly normal and even somewhat boring fashion.
The new Carousel format includes many more listings, and is much more eye-catching with rich information for each business listed, such as an image, number of reviews, review score, average costs, and type of food.
Typically we see that Google continues to push organic listings farther down on the SERP. Organic results are getting less real estate due to expanded coverage for the knowledge graph results (just try searching “acne treatment”) and product listing ads (PLAs). However, the local Carousel listings are located on top of the page, above paid search, knowledge graph results, and organic listings.
Furthermore, the new horizontal design displays about 30 percent more business listings and it covers about 40 percent less vertical space, leaving more room for organic listings than previous local results. Even more local results can be displayed once the user moves the map to his or her desired areas. This gives local SEO a much larger opportunity to dominate the search results page.
Impact on Click-throughs in the Carousel
Because search results are shown horizontally and not vertically, traditional ranking CTRs may no longer apply. In a recent study, published on LocalU.org, it was discovered that the No. 1 local ranking position did not always get the highest amount of clicks. In the test, the actions of 83 people were tracked on the new layout.
The results showed that 48 percent of the total clicks were on Carousel results and only 14.5 percent of the clicks were on the map. Additionally, the eighth Carousel result had the most clicks and the third Carousel result had the second most clicks.
[Source : http://www.covario.com/2013/07/googles-local-carousel-a-new-form-of-discovery-marketing/#fbid=Qxr9oXvOtlT ]
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