Search intent vs. opportunity

[kexej28769@nongnue]

Another example is Twitter results. You've probably seen the Twitter carousel, which is a visually distinct format with three tweets, but have you seen a result like this (on a search for "cranberries")?



At first glance, it looks organic (except for bahamas number data Twitter icon), but this result is a vertical result pulled directly from the Twitter data feed. It is not subject to traditional organic optimization and ranking factors.

All of this is to say that organic real estate has been shrinking for quite some time, giving way to vertical results, knowledge graph results, and other rich features. Google will continue to experiment, and we can expect some SERPs to continue to shrink. Where the data suggests that one answer is enough, we may see only one answer at the expense of organic results.


It's easy to let our imaginations run wild, but we have to consider intent. The majority of searches never have a definitive answer, and some questions aren't even questions in the traditional sense.

From an SEO and content perspective, I think we need to expand our idea of informational search intent (versus transactional or navigational, using the classic model). Some questions are fact-based, and can be answered by the ever-expanding knowledge graph. To this day, a search like “When is P-Day?” still shows organic results, but Knowledge Cards give us a definitive answer...