Newsletter #57

Local's Merry-go-round: Optimizing for Query Carousels 🎠

January 29, 2020

Next Level Local Results With Query Carousels

Over the past few years Google has been expanding the local search results to include highlights and mentions from the latest features available in Google My Business. The most recent addition to local search result types has been dubbed the Query Carousel (by the team over at LocalU) and can feature a combination of results highlighting snippets from Posts, reviews, or Question and Answers.

As you can see from the image above, when the Query Carousel result is triggered, the information that is featured is given priority over other information in the Business Profile (like address, phone number, hours). As Mike Blumenthal suggests in this Local Deep Dive, this result type appears to be triggered by intent-driven queries. The Query Carousel creates another opportunity for businesses to take advantage of the features available in GMB and start optimizing for intent driven queries in their Business Profile.How to Optimize:

Have you seeded Questions and Answers? Address some of the top queries about the services and products your business offers. What other important questions can you provide answers to?
Are you actively using Posts? Create new Post content to go into further details about your products, services, or business. Target unique questions and answers that require specific details in your post that may not fit in the general Q&A area. Target long tail local queries and develop more in-depth post content. You don’t need to always be selling in Posts either. You can be helpful, informative, and educational.
Encourage customer reviews and respond to reviews. Because many businesses are still not taking advantage of the available GMB features, the most common Query Carousel results we’ve come across are review highlights. At least for now, according to Mike and Carrie’s observations, if your listing doesn’t have over 100 reviews, you may not be able to trigger this result type.

Want to read more about the Query Carousel? Check out this awesome article from Brodie Clark on the topic.

Cheers,Team Whitespark

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