Last month we started seeing a new search feature appearing on Google search results in Europe. You might have seen this too; it looks like this:
This new feature has become known as the “find results carousel”. It shows on a range of search terms that have local intent e.g. ‘hairdressers in Kent’, ‘car rental in Bristol’, etc.
The intention of this feature is to provide more prominence to 3rd party directories and sites over Google’s own properties such as Google Maps / Google My Business.
That this is only happening in Europe gives a clue as to why Google would want to do this. Google has been in repeated battles with the EU over its antitrust rules, and is now likely trying to get on their good side. The EU has previously said that Google is giving too much search real estate to its own properties, so this looks like Google evening that up a bit.
What sites appear in the carousel?
The types of sites that feature in the carousel depend on what industry is being searched for. Searches for museums might show results from Timeout, but this is unlikely to show on searches for hairdressers or storage.
From our research the sites that are showing for storage companies are:
- gumtree.com
- yell.com
- mylocalservices.co.uk
- cylex-uk.co.uk
- 192.com
- yelp.co.uk
- tripadvisor.co.uk
- groupon.co.uk
- gb.kompass.com
Where do these “Find Results” carousels appear?
How come I can’t see it?
It seems the find results carousel appears more often for certain industries than others. We tested 52 of the largest cities in the UK with the search “storage [location]” and the carousel only appeared on 14 of the searches. This might change over time, and may change depending on user location – these are fairly new, so not much is known about them.
How often are people clicking on it?
We don’t know yet how popular these are, it might be that people’s eyes skim right over this area of the results. However, given how much testing Google does on its search results you can be fairly confident that if these carousels stick around it will be because users are interacting with them.
What can I do about it?
You can’t change whether or not the “find more carousel” appears above your target search results, but you can make the most of it when it does. You can do this by ensuring that your company appears in the directories that are being shown in the carousel, these are the ones we highlighted above.
This would be best practice anyway, and as always, if you need any help implementing this don’t hesitate to get in touch with us
