Last year brought major updates to Google’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO), significantly affecting search results rankings. These included Core Web Vitals as ranking signals and a heightened focus on mobile-first indexing. In response, website owners must make their sites more user-friendly, focusing on factors like loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. With mobile-first indexing, Google now primarily uses mobile content for indexing and ranking, making mobile optimization vital for businesses.
Failure to adhere to these updates can negatively impact search rankings, which can subsequently affect website visibility and traffic. For businesses, keeping up with these SEO updates is integral to a successful digital marketing strategy.
Google is presently testing an exciting new feature: the carousel rich result. It is anticipated to be applied to products, local businesses, and events. It introduces an interactive visual display, allowing users to swipe through results easily. This feature promises to make information more accessible, engaging, and visually appealing, benefiting businesses in retail, hospitality, and event sectors particularly.
Still under development, the carousel rich result introduces a scrollable horizontal carousel that can display a list of items with various configurations. It promises easy navigation, quick and smooth scrolling of an array of items. It will be possible to alter the number of items displayed at a time, the speed of scrolling, and other customization options to cater to user preferences. This anticipation of this feature’s rollout is high due to its potential to dramatically enhance the user experience.
Carousel rich results are currently being utilized predominantly for LocalBusiness and its subcategories such as Restaurant, VacationRental, and so on. These structured data play a pivotal role in enhancing online visibility; they help businesses stand out in search results and attract potential customers. Moreover, they provide detailed and useful information about the business directly in the search results, enhancing the user experience.
The carousel rich result displays information about price, ratings, and images of the items as “tiles”. The display order is determined by the ItemList’s structured data. All info in the ItemList structured data must be reflected on the webpage, preventing webmasters from populating the structured data with unseen website content.
With the carousel rich result feature, publishers are afforded the flexibility to incorporate various elements into their platform, provided they fall within the eligible structured data types. This broadens the potential of data representation and information delivery, contributing to improved user interaction and understanding.
Google’s recent updates promise improved adaptability and functionality in data presentation, boosting user experiences and SEO performance, and providing a glimpse into the future of SEO guided by Google’s innovations.
