What Are SERP Features?
Google SERP features are any of the non-traditional organic results that appear on search engine results pages (SERPs).
SERPs used to have a uniform look and contained only textual results (ten blue links), but the landscape of search has changed and SERPs are now enriched with different search result formats (images, videos, answer boxes, tweets, reviews, etc.)
These rich results — or SERP features — help users find information faster and make the SERPs more visually appealing.
What SERP Features Does SerpWatch Track?
Besides tracking your keywords’ positions, SerpWatch also tells you which SERP features your keywords rank for.
SerpWatch tracks the following SERP features:
- Images
- Paid
- Video
- Featured Snippet
- Answer Box
- Knowledge Graph
- Google Review
Whenever one of your keywords ranks for a rich result, a SERP feature icon will appear in the SERP Feature column in your keyword list:
You can also track your SERP features in the project and keyword level graphs by clicking the SERP Features tab.
The project level graph shows all keywords that are currently ranking for a SERP feature, while the keyword level graph shows all dates that this keyword ranked for one of the SERP features.
Project Level Graph:
Keyword Level Graph:
How Do SERP Features Affect My Ranking Position?
As shown in the example above, SERP Features can take up a big chunk of the first page in Google and push organic results down the page.
So how do SERP features translate into rankings?
Some types of SERP features (Featured Snippets, Ads) usually appear above the 1st organic position.
This is why Featured Snippet is also referred to as “Position Zero.”
However, regardless of how many features appear on the search results page, Google always counts exactly 10 results per SERP.
This means that if your keyword ranks for a featured snippet, SerpWatch will show your position as 1.
Also, keep in mind that once Google picks your content to appear in a Featured Snippet, it counts the Snippet as one of the organic search results.
Ever since Google introduced its “deduplicating” algorithm update in January 2020, websites can no longer appear in Featured Snippets and Page 1 organic listings simultaneously.
