SERP Features

Google calls them visual elements. Its gallery describes them as the building blocks of the results page: text results, rich results, image and video results, and exploration features, with the way each looks changing over time and with the device, the country and the language of the search^[1]. “SERP features” is the name search teams use for the same parts.

The query decides which of them appear. Google’s systems read words such as “cooking” or “pictures” as a sign that recipes or images may suit the search best, and a search for “pizza” brings nearby businesses^[2]. Google’s own example is a search for “bicycle repair shops”, which will likely show local results and no image results, where “modern bicycle” is more likely to show images but not local results^[3].

So a position in a list says less than it did. A featured snippet reverses the format of a result and shows the descriptive snippet first, and it can also appear inside a related questions group^[4]. Rich results are made from structured data that a page carries^[5], and AI Overviews are shown only when Google’s systems judge them additive to classic Search, so they often do not appear^[6]. A page can hold the first organic link and still sit below several of these.

Not every feature can be earned the same way. Google says a page cannot be marked as a featured snippet: its systems decide^[4]. For the AI features of Search, it says the control for site owners is robots.txt for Googlebot, and that Google-Extended limits AI training and grounding in some of its other systems^[6]. In QueryRev’s study, Google-Extended is blocked by name on 411 of the 6,294 sites whose robots.txt could be read, 6.5%^[7]. That rule is not the control for the AI features of Search.

Per tracked query, device and location: the features on the page in the order they appear, which of them hold a link to your site, and where the first organic link sits. Search Console numbers each element of the page as one position, from the top of the page, whether it holds one link or many^[8]. A link below four elements is reported at position 5, even when it is the first organic link.

Keep the sample fixed. Because the page changes with the device, the country and the language, a feature seen on a phone in one country says little about a laptop in another. Record the same queries from the same places each month, and compare the share of queries on which each feature appears.

For the features you hold, record the feature and the URL it links. Sites that appear in Google’s AI features are reported in the Performance report of Search Console, within Web search, with the rest of the results^[6]. Record the feature beside the report’s figures, so that a change in clicks can be read against a change in the page.

Sample data: an invented site, to show the method.

For one sample query, a shop’s sizing guide ranks first among the organic links. The results page shows an AI Overview, a featured snippet, a People Also Ask box and a row of video results above it. In Search Console the guide reports position 5, and the click-through rate is low for a first organic result.

Nothing is wrong with the page. The features answer part of the question before the link is reached. The shop checks which of the four it could hold: the featured snippet, by putting the answer in the first sentence under the question as a heading, and the AI Overview, which needs no markup beyond the basics. It cannot choose to be in the People Also Ask box.