According to data from search marketing platforms RankRanger and STAT Search Analytics, Google has dropped the percentage of time that video and images boxes show up in the search results. In fact, the data shows a 20 to 30 percent drop in these search features showing up in the Google web and mobile search results.
Video carousels or boxes drop. Around November 13th or 14th, according to these tools, Google began showing fewer video boxes or carousels. These boxes look like this:
Here is a chart from RankRanger showing the drop:
Here is a chart from STAT showing the drop:
Image carousels or boxes drop. Around November 14th as well, according to RankRanger, Google began showing image carousels or boxes 30% less often for the data set they are tracking. These boxes look like this:
Here is a chart from RankRanger showing the drop:
Why does this matter? One way of getting your content to show up higher in Google search was to not just optimize for the top ten blue links but also to try to get your vertical content to show up in these carousel or boxes. So if your web page didn’t rank well for a specific keyword phrase, you can try to create videos or images that would rank well in the carousel boxes. With less of these boxes showing up, it may impact your traffic that you leverages around vertical search.
About The Author
Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land’s News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.