All Script And Tols For Free: 🔍 Getting content ideas from the SERPs

🔍 Getting content ideas from the SERPs

May 21, 2020

Good morning Search Marketer, sometimes it's not all about Google,

I have been playing around with Bing's new Yes/No summary results that it debuted this week. It's a great user experience, and one that SEOs and content marketers should pay attention to. Take the example of "do bumble bees sting?" (Turns out I've wrongly thought for years that they don't.) Among the 6 sources cited, Terminix shows in both the first and second excerpt in the summary carousel. It's like a double featured snippet, but in a better experience.

In the case of Terminix, the source page uses a question and answer format, making Bing's job that much easier. But Bing also uses natural language representation modeling to infer answers when they aren't explicitly on the page. It's going to be fascinating to watch search evolve with new applications of natural language understanding and inference. In the meantime, take some time to see how Bing is treating FAQs related to your business for content ideas.

Reminder, Shopping ads enthusiasts, Kirk Williams and Mike Ryan will be joining me on Friday at 2:00 p.m. for a Shopping-centric Live with Search Engine Land. If you'd like to attend live, fill out this quick (non-marketing) form.

You can view all of our past Live with Search Engine Land episodes as well as quick excerpts on our YouTube Channel. Be sure to subscribe while you're there!

Keep reading for a look at a new Google search UI test and more.

Ginny Marvin,
Editor-In-Chief

Chatter

Are those ad sitelinks or…?

"Getting that odd Google layout where lots of listings are in rounded boxes. (I'd guess if you showed this to 100 people and asked 'how many of these links are ads?' you'd get an interesting split)," Dan Barker tweeted yesterday. He shared this screenshot of a Google desktop ad test that puts an outline around each of the ad's sitelinks.

What do you think? Does the test shown above make it harder for users to understand that the sitelinks are actually part of the ad, or is it clear?

Google is constantly running tests in how it displays organic and paid search results. Another desktop test that's been spotted recently, including by Pedro Dias, puts drop-shadowed boxes around individual organic listings, similar to the card treatment on mobile.

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Search Shorts

User generated content, dark mode and generic queries.

User generated content & SEO. A new video from Google's John Mueller says, Google does not differentiate between your content and user generated content on your pages.

Dark mode. The Google Search app now supports dark mode automatically based on your iOS and Android settings, more details can be found on Twitter.

Ranking for generic queries. "It happens that sites rank for super-generic keywords that get a ton of volume, but where they're really not a great match. Fixing that changes the absolute traffic significantly, but looking at the queries, it makes sense," said Mueller.

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