Our SEO team are monitoring a new feature for search engine results pages (SERPs) that will allow users to view information about a website, before clicking on the result. The feature, known as “About this Result” will provide a popup when searchers click on the three dots within the results snippet.
About this Result will provide searchers with more details about what they’re intending to click on. The popup will contain details about where the information has been sourced, security or whether the listing is an advertisement. Providing more data in SERPs has been a trend that is creating an increasing number of zero-click searches.
Google’s announcement suggests that information shown about a company will utilise sources such as Wikipedia. The new feature attempts to give a searcher more context about a site or company they’ve not heard of before – specifically referencing health and finance websites. These topics, often referred to as YMYL or “Your Money Your Life”, are under increasing scrutiny from Google when analysing page quality.
Where Wikipedia entries are not available, Google have confirmed they’ll provide other contextual details from other sources or their index. These features will apply to Google’s rich snippet results such as the local listing pack, where Google will make clearer the source of this information. These details about companies will be managed in line with existing policies for Google’s Knowledge Panels.
The About this Result feature was launched in the US at the start of this month and is expected to be seen in UK search results later this year. The change gives companies a strong reason to ensure their information is up to date across multiple sources, including Google My Business and Wikipedia.
If you’d like to learn more about how this update may affect your website, or would like to know more about our SEO services, please contact us.