29 Google SERP Features and Updates for SEOs

When Google shows a page in SERPs, it displays the name of the site the web page comes from. This is what a site name denotes in this context.

Here’s how it looks.

Don’t confuse site names with title links. Title links are specific to individual web pages, while the site name applies to the entire site.

Site names on Google search are supported for domains (for instance, yoursite.com) and subdomains(for instance (blog.yoursite.com). However, this doesn’t apply to subdirectories (yoursite.com/resources).

This is part of Google’s larger initiative to thwart miss information from spreading through the search engine. 

The feature was launched on April 2nd, which is celebrated as the International Fact Check Day, but it’s currently limited to the US region. However, Google has confirmed the global launch of the feature in the coming days.

More About This Page – April 2022

This feature is more aligned with the commitment of Google to show trustworthy websites on the top of the results. 

When a user searches for any information that directly or indirectly impacts the person’s life, Google wants to make sure the results that show up are trustworthy. That’s essentially why Google quality rater guidelines give such impetus to E-A-T. 

However, Google is now giving the option for the users to check the credibility of the websites. Now, when a user clicks on the About this Results three dot symbol, the person can see more details about the website that’s presenting the information and also other search results that provide more context to the query used for the search.

The People Search Next feature is not a replacement for any other Google search feature, rather it’s an additional feature like People Also Ask, People Also Search For, Refine This Search, and Related Searches. 

The feature is currently introduced in the US for English-language based mobile searches.

Here is an example of how it looks:

As you can see, the People search next feature appears just above Related searches. Its position in the Google mobile search results seems to be at the bottom of the SERP.

Google confirmed  that People search next will appear whenever it senses what might be a helpful next search.

According to Search Engine Land, Google in addition to this feature is also testing a new edge to edge autocomplete interface and a few other full width elements for desktop results.

This is another test where you can see the featured snippet in full-width and the shopping results appearing below it.

With the current interface been rolled out, when users search for businesses nearby, they can see local results on the left and a map on the right.

Below is a screenshot of the new design that shows the map on the right side of the local search results.

This is tole old design where the map is the top and the local results appear below the map.

Google has been testing this new design for several months now. If you see a lot of traffic and business from the Google local results, you may notice changes to that traffic now. 

The local results are now higher up on the desktop search results and the map is now being replaced from the top of the page to the right side.

It will no longer consider user query while making the titles.

It will now make use of text that humans can visually see when they arrive at a web page.

Google is now specifically considering the main visual title or headline shown on a page. This is the content that site owners often place with the H1 tag or other header tags.

Google said that in 80% of the search results, the HTML title tags are still the primary way it produces titles, however, this new change was introduced to produce more readable and accessible titles for pages.

Google also added that in certain cases, it might add site names wherever it is seen as helpful and in other cases, it might select the most relevant portion of a title when encountering an extremely long one.

Google took the initiative after it received feedback about titles not making sense.

If you’ve noticed changes in your CTR from the Google search results, it may be due to these changes. This new change has resulted in titles that are more readable and preferred by searchers.

Auto complete feature has been one of the most time-saving features introduced by Google ever since its inception. It’s believed that the autocomplete feature saves around 3000 hours per day. 

First introduced in 2004, the feature provides suggestions to the users while the search query is being entered. Over the years, the predictions shown have been improvised based on the popularity of the related queries that people search for. 

The new full-width autocomplete feature will display people also ask please also search and also related queries to make the search experience much more seamless. 

But recently, Google has confirmed that it has made changes to display a maximum of two FAQ rich results for every search result snippet in its SERPs. The update was rolled out on June 17, 2021.

So, the FAQ rich snippets will be shorter than before here on. This means there is room for more sites to show up higher on search results.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land

The above image shows the standard featured snippet that appeared on Google’s right sidebar until last week. Below is how the featured snippet is appearing after the rolled out of the UI update on Thursday, 19th March. 

Courtesy of Search Engine Land

Mordy Oberstein of RankRanger was the first to notice the change and he took it to Twitter, sharing the screenshots of the decline in clicks from the right side featured snippet along with how it’s displayed now. 

Looks like Google has totally killed the right-side Featured Snippets. Now seeing the format in the 'main' results column.

cc: @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/Jb4CIACWEn

— Mordy Oberstein *Mistakes Happen* (@MordyOberstein) March 19, 2020

For the search results that used to appear on the right sidebar featured snippets, those URLs will now appear only once in the first result page instead of twice.

Before January 22, the featured snippet used to appear once on the right sidebar and once as a regular organic listing. With featured snippet being a part of the main result column now, other organic listings appear further down on the page.

If an image displayed on the SERP result belongs to a product, recipe or a video, an icon representing the type of page will be displayed.

“Later this week, Google Images will show new icons on the desktop that provides useful information to indicate if images lead to pages with products for sale, recipes or video content. Mousing-over icons expand them to show the icons with text or length of the video,” reads the official tweet from Google.

Later this week, Google Images will show new icons on desktop that provide useful information to indicate if images lead to pages with products for sale, recipes or video content. Mousing-over icons expands them to show the icons with text or length of video…. pic.twitter.com/RrbGnk27iq

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) February 25, 2020

The new addition to the SERP has resulted in Google moving the details of the image dimension to its inner page. Now, users have to select the thumbnail image to check the size.

“As part of this change, image dimensions that currently appear for mouse-over on Google Images thumbnails will be removed. These can still be accessed by mousing over the image in the information display that appears when a thumbnail is selected,” Google added. 

As part of this change, image dimensions that currently appear for mouse-over on Google Images thumbnails will be removed. These can still be accessed by mousing-over the image in the information display that appears when a thumbnail is selected…. pic.twitter.com/AcI8rSe49m

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) February 25, 2020

This feature isn’t available yet, but you can optimize your images for metadata in advance to ensure that the feature can be utilized when it’s available. 

To ensure Google can discover your images to index, ensure that the images on your website are open to public viewing and doesn’t require people to log in or open an account on your site.  You must also ensure that your pages aren’t disallowed by robot.txt file or robot meta tag. Use the best practices for Google image and follow Google Webmaster guidelines to ensure that Google can discover your content easily. 

To tell Google that your images are licensable, add metadata to them. You can either add structured data or IPTC photo metadata. The IPTC photo metadata is embedded in the image itself and the image and the metadata can move from page to page while still staying intact.  You only need to embed IPTC photo metadata once per image.

The same webpage that feature in the #0 position used to appear within the first five results, but it seems like Google no longer wants to give this advantage. After the recent Google UI update Google is testing ways to ditch the undue SERP privilege enjoyed by websites on Featured Snippets.

With the new update, a web page that appears on the Featured Snippet will not appear within the first page of the organic search results. However, it will get featured as the first result on the second page of SERP.

It’s a welcome change as if implemented globally as a handful of websites are currently getting undue attention on SERP as they were listed twice.

However, Google continues to display two separate pages from the same domain on the first page of SERP, which is also one of the contented issues.

Replying to my question about the same, John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google said that since these are SERP Features, they can change over time.

These are organic search features, so they can change over time.

— I am John – 🍟 Say no to cookies, biscuits only 🍪 (@JohnMu) January 16, 2020

According to the announcement, the mobile SERP results for product based queries will now feature a new addition to help users find products listed on various ecommerce stores organically. The new SERP Feature is in addition to the Shopping Campaign, which already lists the products but through paid marketing.

Interestingly, the new Popular Products SERP Feature will have an innate filter so that the users can choose products that best matches their expectations within the Google’s Search Engine Results Page.

The announcement says, “You can filter by style, department and size type, or look at multiple images of a product. And if you want to learn more or you’re ready to buy, you can easily visit a store’s website.” 

This new SERP feature is a handy addition for the users, however, when it comes to ecommerce portals such as Amazon, they may find it as an imminent threat in the coming days. When more buying-intent search queries will be fulfilled within the Search,  there is a possibility that Google might win the battle for the product search market. 

In addition to this, small scale online stores may benefit from the new SERP feature as they can now compete with the likes of Amazon without having to enlist their products with e-commerce giants. 

What Google is looking forward to is helping users make the right buying decision within Google’s ecosystem. To make this happen the search engine giant has done the hard work for bringing products from all relevant stores together along with reviews and multiple images that can help in making an informed buying decision. 

You can add carousel structured data on your site in combination with one of the following types of content:

• Course
• Movie
• Recipe
• Restaurant