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What are SERP features?

Find out what SERP features are, and discover all the SERP features that can be seen for keywords of your target site analysed at Ahrefs.

Helen avatar
Written by Helen
Updated this week

The days of 10 blue links are long gone - almost any keyword you put into Google will show a bunch of SERP features in the SERP:

SERP features in action

Examples of this includes sitelinks, videos, tweets, knowledge cards, and more. Also known as "structured data features", the full list of structured data features that Google supports can be found here in their documentation, and are known to change over time.

What SERP features we track in Ahrefs

Certain SERP features contain URLs of the pages that the content is sourced from. For such SERP features, we can also track the positions of which a target website does, or does not rank for them:

The full list of SERP features that Ahrefs can track in SERPs can be found below.

Featured snippet

This feature is designed to give specific answers to search queries using information extracted from a third-party website, which is displayed in a box typically at the top of a SERP with a link to the website the information was pulled from.

Local pack

This feature appears at the top of the SERPs when a user makes a search with local intent. It contains a map and three local business listings relevant to the search. The Local Pack is also known as the Map Pack, Snack Pack, or Google 3-Pack.

The keywords triggering the local pack SERP feature often include “near me” or “near [location],” but not necessarily as Google knows your location by default. Learn more.

Sitelinks

This feature represents other relevant links within your website that appear for queries involving your exact domain or brand name, helping users get to main pages they want to see directly from the SERPs.

Top stories

Top stories is a block of news articles relevant to a query that appears in the top half of the SERP and includes time stamps and publisher names.

Image pack

Image packs are several images that usually appear as a horizontal row of image links, clicking which will take you to a Google Images search. They can appear in any

organic position on a SERP.

Videos

Videos stand for a video carousel that contains thumbnails of multiple videos on the same topic. All featured videos are from across the web, with the majority coming from YouTube.

Discussions and forums

This SERP feature shows links from online forums and discussion boards that are relevant to the search query.

X (Twitter) Box

Google partnered with X and started to index tweets. Now directly in SERPs they display the most recent or trending tweets in relation to a user’s query.

Google Search Ads 

They usually appear at the top and/or bottom in the SERPs, above and below organic results. Each ad has a bolded [Sponsored] label next to it.

Top Ads

Bottom Ads

Paid Sitelinks

Similar to normal Sitelinks, this feature represents other relevant links within the website that shows up in a search ad:

Shopping Ads

This Sponsored block consists of multiple websites running ads to promote a product from their website. Unlike search ads, each shopping ad shows a product picture, price, store name, and a link to the product page.

Knowledge card    

This feature appears when Google can give a short and definitive answer to the question and typically appears at the top of the SERP on a desktop search.

Knowledge panel     

This feature provides an extensive answer to a specific question and gives searchers basic information about a topic without them having to click through the SERP.  It usually appears at the top right corner of a SERP on desktop results and at the top on mobile devices, but, as always, under the AdWords.

People also ask

This feature represents algorithmically-generated questions that Google believes might relate to your search query. Each question typically represents a Featured snippet that expands in an accordion style dropdown. Related questions are mixed into organic results and can take different locations in the SERP.

Thumbnail

Image thumbnails can appear along with other organic results when Google thinks they may benefit the user.

Thumbnails can be seen combined with other SERP features. In Ahrefs, we would categorise the following example as both "Featured Snippet", and "Thumbnail".

Video preview

Video previews can appear along with other organic results when Google thinks they may benefit the user. They have a title, a link, and a description just like a regular snippet.

Shopping

Each product featured in this block contains a product photo, title, price, store name and (optionally) review rating score. Products shown in this SERP feature are not sponsored by ads.

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