[Build Backlinks Online] Inside In-depth Articles: Dissecting Google's Latest Feature

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Inside In-depth Articles:
Dissecting Google's Latest Feature'


Posted by Dr-Pete

Last week, Google launched its latest feature, the "In-depth articles" block.
Like News results or local packs, in-depth articles are a rich SERP element that
sits in the left-hand column but doesn't count as a standard, organic result.
Here's an example, from a search for "rainforest":




We originally spotted in-depth articles in testing as early as July, and as of
August 6th the feature officially went live for English queries on Google.com.
Over the weekend, I re-tuned our MozCast 10K engine (which tracks a set of
10,000 queries and their features) to take a deeper look at in-depth articles.
This post covers what we know so far.

Variations on a theme

All in-depth article blocks we're currently tracking have three results
â I've seen no exception to this rule yet, although that could change as
Google collects more data and adapts. There are a few minor variations to how
in-depth articles appear. Here's a complete snippet, which includes an image
thumbnail, title, description, publisher icon, publisher, and author (from a
search for "presidential candidates"):




Some in-depth article listings don't have authorship (from a search for
"wedding pictures"):




Finally, some listings don't have publisher icons or names (from a search for
"jobs"):







So far, every in-depth article result I've seen in the wild has had an image,
title, description, and either a publisher name or domain name. Image thumbnails
seem to be taken directly from the articles and cropped.


In testing, we saw some in-depth article blocks in the middle of search
results, but every example I've seen since launch has appeared at the end of the
results page â after organic results, but before the bottom ad block.
That's only based on anecdotal evidence, as we're not currently tracking the
position, and Google is likely to mix things up as they move forward and test
new variations.


One oddity â in-depth article blocks seem to appear on pages with nine
organic results, suggesting that the in-depth block itself may be treated as
result #10. It's getting harder and harder to tell the true count of rankings,
but it looks like natural result #10 is getting pushed to page 2, and the block
is simply inserted.




Some basic statistics

Across the 10,000 queries that MozCast tracks, 352 displayed in-depth articles
the morning of August 12th, which equates to roughly 3.5% of queries. By volume
(using Google's "global" volume metric), these queries accounted for 6.9% of
total volume for our 10K data set, suggesting that the search terms tended to be
higher-than-average volume.


Google has suggested that in-depth articles will typically trigger for "broad"
topics, but that's a bit vague, so let's take a look at a few examples from
different ends of the spectrum. First off, here are ten high-volume searches (as
measured by Google's "global volume" metric) that triggered in-depth articles on
8/12:


jobs
ancestry
50 shades of grey
wedding dresses
forever21
bruce springsteen
smartphone
led
pregnancy
medicare


While these cover the range from a popular novel to a trendy mall store, it
does seem like searcher intent is fairly vague in these queries. Someone
searching for "led" could be shopping for light bulbs or trying to figure out
when Robert Plant is playing near them. The in-depth results for "jobs"
contained one article about Steve Jobs:




There's been some speculation that "broad" might refer to "head" queries
(often, single-word searches). Here's the distribution of the 352 queries by
number of words (the number in parentheses is the percentage for the entire 10K
data set):


1-word = 37.5% (21.1%)
2-word = 50.3% (45.6%)
3-word = 9.1% (24.4%)
4-word = 2.6% (7.0%)
5+-word = 0.6% (2.0%)


It's important to note that the keyword set we use does not contain very
long-tail queries and is generally skewed toward shorter phrases. The average
word count of all 352 queries is 1.80. For reference, the average word count for
our entire 10K data set is 2.24 â so, Google does seem to be leaning a bit
toward shorter queries. For reference, here are the five longest queries that
showed in-depth articles in our data set:


church of jesus christ of latter day saints
the girl with the dragon tattoo movie
department of homeland security
post traumatic stress disorder
mitt romney for president


Our 10K engine tracks a wide variety of queries (by volume, competitiveness,
length, industry, etc.), but they do tend a bit toward commercial keywords. We
don't have exact data on brand vs. non-brand queries or commercial vs.
informational, but it does appear that in-depth queries are appearing across a
wide range of intent.

The news connection

Clearly, it's hard not to see a news and big media connection in these
in-depth articles. Are in-depth articles a replacement for news results? No (at
least not for now) â many of the results we tracked had both in-depth
articles and a news box. For example, a search for the popular novel "50 Shades
of Grey" showed standard news results:




âas well as in-depth articles (note, that there's no overlap between the
articles):




Are posts with news results more likely to show in-depth articles? It
certainly looks that way. Across our entire 10K data set, 16.8% of queries
contained a news result block on August 12th. For that same time period, 55.7%
of queries with in-depth articles contained news results. There's almost
definitely some algorithmic connection between these two entities.

The big winners (so far)

So, given the news connection, do the major news sources have an advantage? At
least for now, it seems that way. The 352 searches with in-depth articles on
August 12th contained 1,056 articles, which were housed on 123 unique root
domains. The top 10 root domains accounted for almost 57% of the total allotment
of in-depth articles. Here are the top 10, in order:


nytimes.com (20.4%)
wsj.com (6.1%)
newyorker.com (4.5%)
guardian.co.uk (4.3%)
wired.com (4.1%)
vanityfair.com (3.9%)
businessweek.com (3.8%)
nymag.com (3.3%)
theatlantic.com (3.3%)
thedailybeast.com (3.2%)

Within our data set, the New York Times alone accounted for one-fifth of the
articles listed in in-depth article blocks. Most of the heavy hitters were
generally considered news sites â other big brands like Yahoo.com and
MSN.com had isolated articles, but Google didn't seem to show them any
particular favoritism.

To be fair, some smaller news sites and niche sites did show up in the list.
Here's an in-depth article listing from the West Virginia Gazette, for example
(from a search for "routers"):




Here's an example of a niche publication, Yoga Journal, getting listed (from a
search for "knee pain"):




Clearly, big publications have an early-mover advantage right now, but what's
unclear is whether that advantage is baked into the in-depth article algorithm
or is just a consequence of other authority and content factors. So, that leads
us to the million-dollar question: what does it take to break into the in-depth
box?

Getting in on the action

While big news organizations have an advantage, there's no compelling evidence
that in-depth articles are a private club. In fact, Google has already posted a
support document with advice on getting listed in in-depth articles. I'll give
you a quick-and-dirty summary:


Use Schema.org article markup

Set up authorship markup
Set up a Google+ account, including your logo
Properly handle paginated articles
Use "first click free" for paywall content


Ana Hoffman wrote a good post that goes into more detail on these in-depth
article support factors. Of course, these aren't sufficient conditions to get
listed â domain authority, content quality, and traditional ranking
factors undoubtedly are also at play here. The good news is that Google is
telling us that you do have a chance at getting in, and there are ways to help
the process.


I suspect Google will be experimenting with and expanding in-depth articles
over the next few months, so all of this data is preliminary and subject to
change. If you're a news site or have reputable, long-form content, I'd strongly
consider at least putting the signals above into place. If anyone manages to
break into an in-depth box, we'd love to hear your story.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!






You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/OfXGGS7q6KI/inside-indepth-articles

You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com