The Single Answer Google Search Results We’ve Been Waiting For

In addition to Voice search SEO, Google is strengthening their focus on mobile with single answer search results answering queries structured in natural language.

The main reason for Google’s actions is the nature of knowledge cards. When a knowledge Card is paired with organic search it can increase the click through rate with immediate information provided to the user, naturally influencing their behaviour to interact with related content.

Collated data from an internal CTR experiment at Moz, showed that SERPS (Search engine results pages) with 10 blue links have a roughly 79% overall organic click-through rate. Add just a Knowledge Card, with no other features, and it drops to 25%, meaning 68% of traffic is lost. But with the technology available, people don’t really want to spend their time searching, they want quick access to information and the answer handed to them when asking a question.

Google has been testing these changes for some time now. Take the search “Where was Robert Downey Jr born?”, Google displays a Knowledge Card plus a set of organic results despite the fact there is one definitive answer. Google even tries to display the answer when typing the question.

On mobile, we at least have the option to view organic results, On Virtual Assistants & Voice Search, we just receive the answer: “Robert Downey Jr was born in Manhattan, New York”.

Google’s push towards voice search and Mobile-first design can sometimes cause interface designs to move back up the chain. If we’re already satisfied with answer on voice and mobile, maybe it works for desktop.

Over the past years, there has been major changes to the SERPs; expanding beyond 10 blue links. At the same time, SERPs have also been shrinking, often at the cost of organic CTR.

Each feature takes up an organic position:

• Image results
• Top stories
• In-depth articles
• Tweets

In a data set of 10,000 SERPs, 51% had less than 10 organic results, while over one fourth of page one SERPS ranged from 5-8 organic results.

Want to know more information or find out how this affects your business? Contact us at Whitehat Agency.