Rich Media Insights from Milestone Research

Milestone uses a number of sources to interpret market changes and opportunities on behalf of the customers: deep analysis of data with Milestone Research, a strong network of digital marketing professionals, including those at Google and Microsoft, and hands-on experience testing and optimizing customer sites every week.

All of these sources came together to help us interpret the long-term trend in rich media and a short-term impact being reported in the network of digital marketers.

Rich results are the most visible change in the search results over the last 6 years, so we at Milestone watch the developments closely.

Some people in the industry have seen sharp drops in FAQ Rich Results impressions and clicks, so let’s start there. FAQ Rich Results show up under a traditional page listing.

To explore the reported impact, we pulled data for 80 sites to compare June and July rich results performance, and for FAQ Rich Results we do not see a drastic change in Impressions, Clicks, and CTR down 6-10% and Position up 6%. So while we do believe some in the industry have experienced big drops, it appears not to be an across the board impact.

Rich Results actually expanded Impressions up 24.7% and Clicks somewhat, while CTR went down as position improved.

Recipe Gallery saw a significant jump of 55% in Impressions and Clicks and some drop in Position and CTR, while Recipe Rich Results was flat.

AMP non-rich results were steady on Impressions with CTR and clicks down. Videos, Reviews, and Product rich results were little changed.

Conclusions: Google adjusts the algorithm most days with larger changes about twice a quarter. Expanded use of rich media and verticalization of the SERPs is a long-term trend we should all expect to continue. Drastic changes that penalize white hat practitioners are often fixed in subsequent adjustments known as rollbacks.

Recommendations: Check your Google Search Console Performance Report and add a Search Appearance qualifier and look at the trend for big changes.

If you see a large change, check the structured data markup on those items for errors, which you can also find in the Google Search Console under Enhancements.

And always remember to not over-react to algo changes. Keep making useful content and propagate that content horizontally across the asset types that display for keywords and are engaged with by your prospects and customers.

If you would like assistance with content, technical SEO, or reporting, drop us a line at sales@milestoneinternet.com.

Addendum:

Here are rich media definitions from Google Support

“Supported search appearance types include:

• AMP on image result – An Image Search result, where the image is hosted in an AMP page.
• AMP non-rich results – A basic, non-graphical (plain blue link) search result for an AMP page.
• AMP article – A visually-decorated search result link, such as an image from the AMP page, plus a content summary. The result can be either free-standing in the results page, or embedded in a carousel of similar result types. AMP article rich results are also counted as rich results.
• Web Story – a visual storytelling format built on AMP that enables a user to tap through full screen images and videos.
• Android App – An Android app installation link or Android app page result in a mobile search. To get your Android app indexed and in search results, follow the Firebase Android App indexing guidelines.
• Event – An event rich result. Read about measuring clicks and impressions for Event items.
• FAQ rich results – A FAQ page.
• How-to rich results – A How-to rich result.
• Job details – A job posting result that shows an expanded description of a job. Read about measuring clicks and impressions for jobs.
• Job listing – A job posting result that shows a summarized view of a job. Read about measuring clicks and impressions for jobs.
• Media Actions – Actions for music, television, and movie structured data, such as listen or watch.
• Product results – Items marked up with Product schema.org markup, or identified as a product result by some other mechanism.
• Q&A rich results – A Q&A page rich result.
• Recipe rich result – A Recipe rich result that appeared outside of a collection in search results.
• Recipe gallery – A Recipe rich result that appeared in a collection of Recipe rich results.
• Rich results – Any type of rich result defined in structured data listed in the search gallery. This includes all rich-result subtypes such as job listing and AMP article rich results.
• Review snippet – A review snippet rich result.
• Special Announcement – A SpecialAnnouncements structured data element with information about COVID-19.
• Web Light results – A lightweight, transcoded version of a webpage, optimized for viewing over slow data connections.
• Videos – Videos that appear in either general search results (type Web) or Discover.”