Google Releases Visual Guide to Search Elements

If you’ve been following news about Google Search over the last few months – you’ll have noticed the increasingly popular use of images as a part of traditionally text-based Google Search results. There’s now more clutter involved with a Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP for short), than at any point in Google’s history. Deciphering where it comes from can be a challenge. How do we actually sort out the differences are between a sitelink, a title link, and a snippet?

Google’s probably been quietly listening to all of our grumbling – they’ve released a brand new guide called Visual Elements Gallery for Google Search which gives helpful cues on where and why certain rich content displays on the SERP. It’s not exhaustive (it currently only features the most commonly used options), and is possibly a work-in-progress. Overall it does a pretty solid job of explaining the context of new search elements, and links to related guides on how marketers can make better use of them in website content.

Google, it should be said, actively pushes Google Ads users to leverage “richer” content, such as reviews and images, in their Search Ads as well. Even still, there’s evidence that harnessing the power of visual & rich results in organic search can have some pretty compelling results.

You can find this guide, and a lot more information about how to make Google’s SERP work better for your business within Google Search Central. This is some of Google’s most up-to-date and expansive documentation on Google Search & SEO – and I highly recommend taking advantage of it.

If you have questions about Google Search, give us a shout!