Is your drop in
traffic a true indicator of less visibility in search results? Or is it
merely because you’re showing up more
prominently?
In the past, we’ve talked about Google’s search interface
changes and how they impact the overall search results - like our article
breaking down how to get in Google’s Answer Box (also known as a Featured
Snippet or 'Position Zero').
How
to Get A Featured Snippet in Google's Answer Box
While getting featured can lead to more click-throughs to
your website to learn more about the subject, it can also lead to people
feeling like their question is already answered without clicking over to your
website.
A new survey from Path Interactive, took a closer look into Google’s organic search
results and how users (particularly younger users) are engaging with those
results.
The survey, which polled users from multiple countries (72%
U.S. respondents), sought to determine how consumers today interact with the
myriad components of the Google SERP.
The findings indicated that while the traditional search
results still dominate user attention, a larger portion of younger users are
becoming more inclined to look at content provided in the Featured Snippets and
Knowledge Panel, without clicking away from the Google results page.
This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as “no-click”
search results.
Source:
Path Interactive (2019)
Younger users were more likely to engage in “no-click” behavior when presented
with Featured Snippets. Older users
tended to look beyond Snippets for more information from other organic links –
though they also were less likely to differentiate between ads and organic
listings.
Nearly three-fourths (72.5 percent) of all respondents found
Snippets trustworthy or semi-trustworthy.
The responses were very similar when asked about Knowledge Panel results – which is the
information that sometimes appears in the right hand column of Google’s search
results.
Source:
Path Interactive (2019)
The majority of searchers (92.1 percent) looked at Knowledge
Panel results. Within that group, 55 percent continued looking at other links,
but the remaining 37 percent said they “considered my search complete” with the
Knowledge Panel — another “no-click” scenario.
How Does This Impact
Your Website’s Traffic?
As mentioned in the beginning of this article, Google’s
Snippets, Knowledge Panels and other structured content is a great opportunity
for your business to be discovered in Google, but it can also lead to users not
needing to visit your website to find the solution to their problem.
One of the biggest examples of this would be to find a business’ location. Back
before these in-search answers existed, in order to find the locations of a
business, you’d have to visit their website. Now, when you search the business
in Google, you can automatically see their location and instantly get
directions through Google. So where you would’ve once had a website visitor out
of that search, now you don’t.
Before jumping to conclusions about a drop in traffic from
last year or the year before, check to see which specific pages have dropped in
traffic to see if it is because of a “no-click” scenario in Google. From there
you can decide whether to work to enhance that page to increase its rankings,
or accept that it is already in a good position but is receiving less traffic because the user is being
helped directly in Google.
Have more questions about Google search rankings? We can
help!
Call Sales & Marketing Technologies today for a free
strategy session with one of our digital marketing experts.