Where is this SERP listing of a product description coming from?
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Google is showing a manufacturers product description below the ads and before the organic listings that I have not seen before, see the attached image. The bad part is instead of attributing it to the manufacturer it is attributing to one of our competitiors and placing thier link with the text.
1. Why is this happening? I can't find any schema or other mark-up on the page explaining where this content is coming from.
2. How do I combat this? I have not seen this type of SERP before.
Any help is appreciated.
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Yes you are 100% right in my opinion. The whole reason I believe for the shift in brand preference is a play on generating more ad spend via Adwords. The search results are so unhelpful for so many searches nowadays.
For example, search for "Trademark Registration" on Google. That SERP used to be full of attorneys and websites offering that service. Now it's mostly government websites forcing the attorneys to buy ads for this highly searched term.
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I confirm this is currently a test - but there isn't anything you can do about it. They are always looking to show the most relevant web pages and in their eyes the manufacturer is the one of the best sources of info.
More importantly (and this is me guessing), you are going to pay more on Adwords if your natural listing are pushed down - hence they are driving you to spend more on Adverts. The more they can get you to spend on Adverts the better - in my opinion manufacturers rarely spend money on advertising so by pushing these further up the rankings, the more retailers have to spend on Adwords.
If they start pushing manufacturers to the top of natural search - even the best SEO, good DA, quality links, relevant unique content (all the things good SEOs have been doing for years) will have been wasted if suddenly manufacturers start appearing in position 1.
A little tip maybe if this is what Google does decided to do - contact the manufacturer and see if you can get listed on their recommend reseller listing, then you may not having to worry about getting number 1 listing, if you can get traffic from the manufacturers page that Google ranks in position 1.
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I'll give you my opinion but it isn't a definitive answer.
I believe what you're seeing is a Google SERP test and they are pulling that from the content on the manufacturer's page but I agree there is no rich markup on the page like Schema to point Google to use it.
A quick search of
lacrosse monkeyshows me no Google ads on the page which is a pretty sure signal Google recognizes this manufacturer as a brand entity. That in and of itself would suggest Google might also understand the products as entities and be pulling content from the product page and testing it in the Knowledgegraph to see how searchers interact with it.Unfortunately I don't think there's much you can do about it.
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