Knowledge Graph product carousel: The mystery of ranking
-
When you search for software-related terms, Google serves a carousel-style item above the organic listings. I've been assuming this is part of the Google Knowledge Graph. See http://imgur.com/a/TQpM5
The mystery lies in the selection of companies that are included in this carousel: the brands included are completely unrelated to the brands that rank well in the "normal" organic search listings. Giving that more color, here are the top 5 brands in "normal" organic search listings, for the query "invoice software," noting where they appear in the carousel: BRAND // normal organic search position // carousel position
- Wave // 1st // not present in carousel
- Quickbooks // 2nd // 1
- NCHSoftware // 3rd // not present in carousel
- Invoicely // 4th // not present in carousel
- Freshbooks // 5th // not present in carousel
Inversely, here are the top 5 in the carousel, noting where they appear in the "normal" organic search listings, again for the query "invoice software":
BRAND // carousel position // normal organic search position
- Quickbooks // 1st // 2nd
- Zoho Office // 2nd // 9th
- Invoicera // 3rd // 15th
- Hiveage // 4th // 30th
- Apptivo // 5th // not present in first 10 pages of search results
Here's an annotated image of the same thing: http://imgur.com/a/0Pa6j
--I represent a brand (I'd rather not mention which) that ranks super well in the normal organic search listings, but doesn't rank accordingly in the knowledge graph carousel.WHAT WE'VE TRIED
-
implemented Schema markup
-
updated Wikidata information
-
updated Wikipedia information
We've reviewed the code on the pages that DO appear in the carousel, and haven't found any common threads.
Several weeks have passed since those initiatives. We've been re-indexed in that time, but are still not included in the search carousel.
I've seen people suggest resources like this
https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2299454/4-google-carousel-optimization-tips
but those tips aren't addressing this problem. Also, things like claiming your business or other local business validation (which we've done) don't seem material to a non-local product search (but stranger things have happened, I know...).A couple of SEOs have suggested AMP, but I've yet to see any authoritative info suggesting a link between AMP and desktop results.
Any help appreciated! I will report back on my findings.
This is a follow-up to a question I previously posted here: https://moz.com/community/q/kinds-of-organic-search-results-google
-
I was curious if you found any resolution to your question about the Software top carousel. I am an SEO for a global software company and have noticed our listings in some of these but not others. They are not showing in any tools I'm using to track search features/snippets. I assume that's because a click on the listing goes to another search (of that product name) rather than to a URL.
I've considered adding Software Schema to our pages thinking that might give us a boost. But reading your responses, it sounds like there is no correlation. Have you found anything new about how to optimize for these?
-
Thanks Peter.
We're still on the hunt here, too, without resolution. I'll post when we crack the nut.
We've also reached as deep into our Google contacts as possible, with no clarity.
Cheers.
-
I've seen a relationship between some of those carousels and search volume, but it appears to be more complex than that (and I think there's a Knowledge Graph component). I don't think markup is having a big impact right now, except for highly specialized results (like recipes). Haven't gotten a good answer from Google, though.
-
Interesting. Are you suggesting that Google chooses who to include based on the volume of brand searches that it gets for each brand?
That doesn't necessarily match my expectation of who is already showing in the carousel, but I don't have solid data on it.
We continue to experiment with meta, markup, wiki, etc. No results yet. If anyone else has suggestions, I'd love to know. And I'll post outcomes here.
-
I can't do much more than speculate, I'm afraid -- I haven't seen any write-ups that seemed to do more than guess. Traditionally, the carousel results were Knowledge Graph driven, but that seems to have evolved. Some carousels are clearly based on search volume. See, for example...
https://www.google.com/search?q=best+movies+of+1984
I guess it no longer states this, but at some point I swear there was help text claiming this was tied to search volume. So, the Knowledge Graph is probably providing the movie list, but volume is driving who "ranks", so to speak.
I suspect something similar is happening with these new business listings, but I'm not sure. Google hates when people manipulate search volume, so they're very unlikely to confirm this.
I don't believe this is connected to any kind of schema or on-page markup at this point. Updating your Wikidata information is probably a good step, but not a sufficient one to get into the list (I suspect).
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can we re rank our Penalyzed website in Google?
Hello This is Maqbul, from India. I have a jobs portal blog [ bharatrecruit.com]. It was getting around 50K to 100K Views a Day and made me $100 a day. But after a few months, my competitor made negative SEO with 12,000 Spammy backlinks. Suddenly my site was hit by Google and now it is getting 200 to 300 Pageviews a day. So the question is I did not disavow bad links for a long time like 3 to 4 months. Now I disavow all the bad links but the website is not ranking. Can we re-rank this site or create another website. Please reply must. None of the bloggers can answer this. Thanks, Regards Maqbul
Technical SEO | | vinaso960 -
Reviews on Product Page or Separated
Good Afternoon We currently have our individual product information pages set-up with a link through to a separate review page optimised for the term "Product A Reviews" I was reading about structured data and if I read correctly, the reviews should sit with the marked up product data so I was wondering whether to merge them back into one page. We have many reviews so the review pages are paginated in blocks of 25 My options are: Leave as it is, product info page and separate review page Merge the review content back in to the main page and have the pagination work on that page Include the first 25 reviews on the product info page then when user clicks through to page 2, 3 etc they're taken to the separated review page. In that way the product page would regularly get new content and we can still have a page specifically targeted for reviews. From the users point of view, they probably aren't even aware they're being taken to a separate reviews page so with that in mind as I'm typing this maybe they should be one page again
Technical SEO | | Ham19790 -
Remove sitemap, effect ranking?
We are considering to remove our sitemap because it doesn't display the right structure. Will it affect current rankings if we remove the sitemap en continuing without a sitemap? Thanks
Technical SEO | | rijwielcashencarry0400 -
Why is my business website site dropping down the ranking
Hi, i have a business site which is dropping down the ratings and I would like your help in understanding why. I know a business site is different from other sites such as news sites and blogs where the front page changes all the time. I would like to know what is the best way to get google to visit the site on a regular basis, should i have a page that changes all the time or should i keep changing all the pages on the site. One of the important pages was always number one in google and now we are number 11 http://www.clairehegarty.co.uk/virtual-gastric-band-with-hypnotherapy any help and advice on how to combat dropping in the rankings would be a great help
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Domain authority and rankings?
I have a site that sits in #1 position for its keywords right now. But it only got there about 1mth ago. The site is only about 6mths old with lots of link building. I check the domain authority and its only 37/100 with the #2, #3 sites having domain authority of 57 and 82 respectively. This site has like 800+ backlinks. While the #2 and #3 sites have 20,000+ backlinks. Does it mean that my site will LIKELY drop in rankings very soon? I know there is no certainty but wld you say that it is highly probable my site will drop?
Technical SEO | | jl2550 -
Wrong page ranking even after fixes. Why?
Howdy, I've read a number of posts on this issue and followed all the advice I could find. My issue is this: several of our targeted keywords have the wrong page ranking which results in a loss of conversion and high bounce rate. I use the site:mydomain.com operator to see how the pages are ranking which I find really useful. One of our targeted keywords is 'wedding stationery' and the page which should rank is shop.confetti.co.uk/branch/wedding-stationery however this page ranks 3rd on our domain. I've done the following: Optimised the correct page De-optimised the ranking pages Added links from the incorrectly ranking page to the page I want to rank using keyword anchor text Added internal links to the page I want to rank from high Page Authority pages using keyword anchor text Here is a link to the SERP which shows the ranking for our domain for the 'wedding stationery' search term. I made the changes a couple of weeks ago. Any advice or explanations as to what is causing this would be greatly received. Thanks in advance, Brendan.
Technical SEO | | Confetti_Wedding0 -
Why sudden change in rankings?
I have been working on a domain for site which has only been up for a few months. I have mainly been working on building trust and authority for the site, with only a few links to my keyword phrases, which I was saving for the end, and concentrating on good quality non-spammy type links. It was progressing nicely until last weekend when I went from the first page on Google to the 3rd and 4th pages. Was there some kind of update?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Website Ranking Issue
Hi, We have been performing our own onsite of offsite SEO along with external assistance and have ranked well over the years with minimal impact from Google updates. Howevr the last so called Panda update has affected us heavily pushing our main phrase 'web design melbourne' from 2nd to 7th where we have been for almost 2 months now on Google.com.au irrespective of onsite or offsite work. We have been trying to find signs of any onsite, IP, duplicate content, titles or other issues that may be holding us back to no avail. The only flag that Google webmaster tools is showing is a number of bad internal site links, which I think is a glitch with the CMS we are using. Even the SEO MOZ tool gives us a higher ranking compared to most competitors on page 1 of Google.com.au for our main phrase. The biggest difference between us and competitors is we chose to target an internal page specific to the topic rather than our homepage. With this sadi we have also reduced our keyword density and content quantity inline with the other sites homepages. Can anyone help shed some light on this? and perhaps something obvious that we have missed, or where we should be looking? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | paulsid0