UPDATE: For the latest on how Rich Answers such as Featured Snippets have grown in Google search over the years, see Featured Snippets: New Insights, New Opportunities
In a test of over 850,000 search queries, we found that Google offered some form of rich answer (AKA a knowledge box) 19+% of the time. If you are not familiar with what a “rich answer” is, the following is an example:
In short, Google provides a direct answer to your question, rather than requiring you to click through to another web page to get that answer. In some cases, Google may provide only part of the answer as well.
UPDATE: We ran this same query set again in July 2015. Find out how much Rich Answers had increased in this query set by then!
While our queries were selected to be more likely to show a rich answer result, this still shows just how far they have come. In this article, I will share the details of our findings, and I will also discuss how well Google is doing in attributing results to their original sources.
The query set was assembled using a mix of Google Autocomplete (AKA Google Suggest), Bing Suggest, and a query set manually assembled here at Stone Temple Consulting. The counts of each query type were as follows:
The manually assembled set of queries covered a variety of categories, including:
If you prefer to get the data via a quick video, here is a video that has Caitlin O’Connell of Stone Temple interviewing me about the study:
And here is a shareable slide deck presentation of the major findings of this study:
Queries Extracted From “Suggested” Searches
This data focuses on queries extracted from Google Autocomplete and Bing Suggest. These queries were mined equally from Bing and Google – we took 250,000 from each for a total of 500,000 queries. We did it this way to avoid biasing the results towards one search engine or the other. Here is what we saw:
In case you are not familiar with what I mean by a suggested query, here is an example from Google Autocomplete:
Other Types of Search Queries
The suggested search queries are a valuable source, but by no means the only source we use, because we felt it was limiting in nature. To that end, we generated over 355,000 additional queries to test as we detailed above.
Information Extracted From Third Party Domains
Google clearly has invested a lot in extracting information from third party domains. Over 73% (more than 122K) of the rich answer boxes provided by Google include a link to a 3rd party URL cited as a source. Google uses a wide variety of sources for information. Authority appears to matter, as nearly 48% of the results that cite a 3rd party source come from sites with a Moz Domain Authority of 100, and Google leverages 30 domains with that DA.
Bing also relies heavily on 3rd party sources, with more than 87% (4,273) of the results including a link. 74% of the results from 3rd party sources provided by Bing come from Wikipedia, which has a Moz Domain Authority of 100.
Is Google Providing Credit Where Credit is Due?
In total we found 166,366 rich answers in our testing. Of these, 42,160 of them did not include an attribution link:
We took a deep dive into the queries that included no link. We broke them down into 51 categories to speed the review, and found that the overwhelming majority of the queries with no attribution contained public domain information.
This included queries such as: “How many quarts in a gallon,” “what is the capital of Washington state”, “how tall is the empire state building”, and “when is Barack O’Bama’s birthday.”
The most notable exception was in the case of song lyrics, where Google sometimes shows the lyrics to a song as shown here:
I did ask Google about this, and a Google spokesperson said the following: “We only show the lyrics for songs for which we have the appropriate rights”. From this statement, it seems quite likely that Google is licensing the rights to the lyrics that they do show.
Do Rich Answer Boxes Cost Sites Traffic?
For about 75% of the rich answers we saw, Google does provide attribution, and these do appear to follow best practices for Fair Use (though I am not a lawyer, so that’s not really my call to make).
There are many sites that have received traffic for many years by publishing public domain information. Clearly, these sites will lose traffic when Google publishes the answer directly in the search results.
There is little to be done about this, as Google has just as much right to publish such information as anyone else.
There is also the case of Google licensing information, such as they appear to have done with song lyrics. You can read an excellent case study by Glenn Gabe about this here. Once again, Google has every right to do this as well.
Last, but not least, there were 1,871 (1.1%) rich answer results in our testing that presented results in list format (these are sometimes called step by step results). These extract detailed information from 3rd party web sites. Google started showing these results back in June of 2014.
Of these, 1,366 (73%) of them include incomplete steps, as marked by a “…”. Here is an example of such a result:
In addition, 799 (42.7%) of the list items include a More Items indicator at the bottom of a partial list, as shown here:
This would seem to me to be a huge win for the publisher, as it would strongly entice the user to click through to the site to get the complete list.
The bottom line is that, from a traffic perspective, some of the rich answer results will end up taking traffic away from sites that were previously getting that traffic. However, all our examinations suggest that Google is playing it by the book.
From a publisher’s perspective, the risk of traffic loss is greatest if you rely heavily on public domain info, or if you rely on info that Google can easily (and cheaply) license.
Different Query Types Included in the Study
There are a number of different features and sub-features that are evident in the rich answers provided by Google. The following table will show what these are, and how often they showed up in our 855K+ tested queries:
What do these features look like? It would be a bit lengthy to show what they all look like, but here is an example image that shows 3 of them:
I recently wrote a post on LinkedIn that shows many different types of rich answers here. This post includes screen shots of a dozen very different types of rich answer results.
Summary
Google has already made a huge investment in developing rich answers in search, and changes keep happening all the time. In my annual industry predictions article on Forbes, I predicted major additional advances in this area by Google in 2015. This is viewed as a critical initiative within Google.
So let me take that prediction one step further. My guess is that by end of year Google will be in the 40% range in responding to our 855K test query set with rich answers. To check that, we are going to rerun our tests of this on a regular basis.
For your purposes, the importance of preparing for this should be clear. This change is coming, and it would be wise to prepare for it. At a minimum, it means not relying on public domain information, or info that Google can easily and cheaply license or derive, for your organic search traffic.
As a result, focusing on very high value content that is specific to the core value of your business is not only a good idea, it’s the only way to thrive in this new world.
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I think my main problem with Google’s rich answers is the fact that everyday searchers might be giving too much credibility to them. “If Google says so, it must be true”. Wikipedia mentality.
Of course, we know very well that the rich answer info is only as good as the source; however, most people won’t bother to double-check the information they see in a rich answer box.
I totally agree Ana!
Google and Wiki are very useful to combine many informations from lots of dictionaries, but it still depends on the influencers; “most people say THAT so it means it’s true” with no dicernement :-S
Great stuff – really interesting. Presumably, the non-attributed answers are either all direct partnerships (weather, stock tickers, etc.), custom Google-owned properties (calculators, the new health boxes, etc.), or the come directly from the traditional Knowledge Graph (FreeBase, WikiData, etc.). It seems that there are essentially two Knowledge Graphs in play right now – one that’s based on Google-owned or licensed sources, and one that’s based on the index.
Really great work Eric. This is impressive and gives us a lot to think about. Would love to know impact of schema.org markup implementation on visibility within the answer box. Did you guys take a look at this?
Remember when SEOs freaked out when Google testing longer (meta description) snippets?
This gives SEOs more targets to shoot for. We have to accept this product, and try to build up our clients to be considered for “rich answer” inclusion. The example of Quikrete above shows that it’s not just something huge brands (like Experian) can win.
Great study.
19% is way over what I had imagined, the knowledge vault’s influence is continuing to grow in 2015.
Thanks for sharing.
i want to know what is the criteria to get my site in google rich answers?
what i need to do.?
Hi Tanvir – we don’t have the answer to that question yet, but we are studying that now!
So what do you see if Google using such wild cards to answer queries in search results. Will there be a day when Google will slowly accumulate all the vital data and will be giving direct answers to user queries? That would be an end to SEO in a way. What do you think?
Hi Amit – I think there will always be queries for which Google does not have an immediate answer, well, for another 10 years at least.
I’m RTing purely due to the expression on Eric the Viking’s face… (just kidding).
I think it’s interesting that people feel that they are competing with the Knowledge Graph as they are competing with a Wikipedia listing. I like the appearance of knowledge-graph items because it’s a strong indicator of informational intent.
Google understands the content on your pages, we can create rich snippets—detailed information intended to help users with specific queries.
Thanks for another great article post.
Great study and helpful data, thanks Eric!
Were you able to track any difference between B2B and B2C keywords? It seems that the Knowledge Graph has gone much deeper into B2C and hasn’t quite figured out how to enter many B2B topic areas. I’m curious what your data might show?
Eric – Awesome post and really great information. I have a followup to this coming soon that I want to reference your post on because I think this supports the point really well.
One thing I wanted to note, the data in the “special features in googles rich answers” table seems a little off. I think the data in percent of rich answers for lines
inlist format
includes a URL
should be switched. Either that, or I don’t understand that table very well 😛
You’re right! We will get that fixed – thanks for pointing it out. The total is right, but the % needs to be swapped with the “Includes a List” item right above it.
there aren’t nearly so many rich answers in germany, but it is discussed as if all answers by google are rich answers.
@Amit Roy “… what to do to get my site in google rich answers?” -> that’s what we all want to know
It is typical for Google to test things here in the US first, and then once they feel confident that they have developed something that users truly like, they begin to roll it out globally. That means if you’re in a country that has fewer answer boxes now, you have an advantage: time. You have time now to consider how to make your content attractive for answer boxes in a way that will also incentivize click throughs. My bet would be that within a year you’ll start seeing a lot more answer boxes in Germany.
Really interesting Research… From a User point of view, its a real time saver. However for the Information providing websites, its a great blow, as the previous visitor who arrives at your website now does not come to you over taken by Google taking the same content from you at times…
Really interesting study guys. I was wondering if you have any data to share on the percentage of websites that were “double dipping” or getting both an answer box type result and a tradition SERP result for a query?
Hi Brian – I think pretty much ALL of them are getting the double dip effect. It’s not uncommon that the rich answer is being pulled from someone that is not in the first position to get the rich answer box. Sweet for them, but not so much for the person that ranks #1.
interesting google rich answer its “not fair” for another websites
I think its very useful.
but very unfair to the writer of the blog.
I aggre when someone says one day google will collect all vital data and use for rich search.
thats the time we need to block google
I actually like that Google is giving people the answers they are looking for right away. Of course I like for my #1 results to show up but if you are trying to rank for something like a this then your not doing something right.. Nice test,,,
I cannot wait till Bing takes over Google. They have been doing this for while now and I think overall a better search engine for the people.
Great, just another good reason to start creating quality content on your site.
There’s no way that Bing will ever take over Google in market share! Have you ever looked at search results from most Bing searches?
The result is fascinating and its look like Google is trying to make SEO more difficult than ever.
My question is how could my content make it in Google rich search? Do schema markup play role in it.
Bing can’t takeover google.
anyways very informative article. before this didn’t listen the term right answer. Thanks for share this…keep this quality work continue,
Google unfortunatley has way too much power . They have been doing this for while now i think this is only going to increase there stranglehold on search.
Hey thank you for sharing this great post. Yah google is too powerful and genius. It will take over the whole industry in next few years.
I’ve also notices that Siri shows more rich cards and can has a higher degree of actual answers based on rich cards, instead of just showing search results.
Darel, there’s no doubt that both the amount of queries Google answers directly and the ways it provides those answers (including rich cards) has continued to grow since we published this study. Be watching later this year for our major update to this study!
Google understands the content on your pages, we can create rich snippets—detailed information intended to help users with specific queries.
Thank you so much for another best article
Thanks for this deep research post to share with us.
Google is a big deal. they always improving & modifies their system to make it more user-friendly.
thanks again
Great information for me
This is impressive and gives us a lot to think about. Would love to know impact of schema.org markup implementation on visibility within the answer box.
There is no discernable impact of Schema.org on your chances of getting a featured snippet.
Guess we should keep make searches like that from time to time and gather sufficient data to calculate and analyze the method and time Google actually needs to improve the rich answer results. I really Appreciate your content and I will also look forward to do a little bit of research myself regarding this topic.