What Is a SERP Feature? Common Types and How to Win Them
A SERP feature is any result on a Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) that is not a traditional organic result. These features are designed to help users quickly find answers to their queries, solve problems, or achieve their goals directly from the SERP. By satisfying users' keyword intent right from the search results, SERP features enhance the user experience and make information more accessible.
The most common SERP Features are:
In the early days of Google, every result on the Google SERP looked the same, and these traditional organic results have not changed much in appearance over the years. However, beginning with AdWords in 2001, Google has been very busy adding other non-organic results into the SERP. Over the years, Google has introduced various Google SERP features to enhance user experience and provide additional information.
How Can I Discover Which SERP Features My Site Has?
In Moz Pro's Keyword Explorer, you can find out which of your tracked keywords trigger a SERP feature. Britney Muller explains how in this Whiteboard Friday video: [insert video link]
What are the Most Common Types of SERP Features?
The table below shows 16 SERP Features that commonly appear in Google SERPs. The icon shows how we identify them in Moz Pro. See the Mega-SERP: A Visual Guide to Google blog post for examples of even more SERP Features.
| Feature | Description | Appearance | Obtainability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adwords (Bottom) | Traditional AdWords ads come in many flavors now, but the most common type appears at the top and/or bottom of the left-hand column, above and below organic results. | ||
| Adwords (Top) | |||
| Featured Snippet | When Google wants to answer a question that isn't in the core Knowledge Graph, they may attempt to find that answer in the index. This creates a special class of organic result with information extracted from the target page. | ||
| Image Pack | Image packs are results displayed as a horizontal row of image links, which click through to a Google Images search. | ||
| In-Depth Article | For broad or ambiguous terms, Google may return a block of "in-depth" articles, which are almost indistinguishable from organic results. | ||
| Knowledge Card | Knowledge Cards (part of the Knowledge Graph) cover a lot of ground, from semantic data from human-edited sources (such as WikiData), to semantic data extracted from the Google index, to private data partnerships. | ||
| Knowledge Panel | Knowledge Panels (aka Knowledge Graph), like Knowledge Cards, extract semantic data from a variety of sources. |
Each of these SERP Features has its own unique characteristics, ranking signals, and best practices. To learn more about each of these SERP Features and how to win them, keep reading below.
In-Depth View of Each SERP Feature
Appearance: Adwords ads come in many flavors now, but the most common type appears at the top and/or bottom of the left-hand column, above and below organic results. Each ad has a colored [Ad] label next to it. Ads push organic results down the page and can impact CTR (especially on mobile browsers).
Obtainability: "Ads are ranked primarily based on how relevant and useful they are to what the person searched for, your bid, and a few other factors." - Google Support
Appearance: Featured Snippets have higher CTRs than regular organic results. In almost all cases, featured snippets extract content from the page that answers the query in the most specific way. While there is usually only a single featured snippet shown, rarely two or more are offered for certain queries.
Obtainability: These generally represent a big opportunity for pages that already rank #1-5 for the given search query. In January 2020, Google made a big change to how featured snippets show up on the SERPs — learn more in our blog post about it here.
