In the Whiteboard Friday session, Tom Capper discusses the top SERP features of 2024, comparing them to early 2023, focusing on their presence and Share of Voice (SoV).
Key Highlights:
- Related Search: Present in 99% of SERPs in 2024, up from 84% in 2023, making it nearly ubiquitous.
- Videos: Shifted from being more common on desktop in 2023 to being more prevalent on smartphones in 2024, indicating the "TikTokification" of SERPs.
- Carousel and Images: Increased presence, especially on smartphones, often overlapping as many carousels are image-based.
- People Also Ask: Useful for keyword research but offers limited direct SEO opportunities.
Share of Voice (SoV):
- Places: Now the top feature by SoV, despite not being in the top five for presence. Indicates prominence when it appears, often at the top of SERPs.
- Carousel: Increased SoV, reflecting its rising prominence over organic results.
- Knowledge Graph: Significant year-on-year increase, especially on smartphones, crowding out organic results.
- People Also Ask: Slight decrease in SoV, potentially being replaced by a new feature called "ask a follow-up question" in Google's test SERPs.
- News: Dropped from 1.3% to 0.9% SoV, driven by fewer SERPs featuring news results, possibly replaced by discussions and forums.
- Organic Results: Decreased from 40% to 34% SoV, and down to 28% on smartphones, indicating a decline in organic links as top SERP items.
Overall, the data suggests a shift towards more diverse SERP features, with organic results becoming less prominent, especially on smartphones.
