seo

Posted by Dr-Pete

Last week, Google launched its latest feature, the “In-depth articles” block. Like News results or local packs, in-depth articles are a rich SERP element that sits in the left-hand column but doesn’t count as a standard, organic result. Here’s an example, from a search for “rainforest“:

We originally spotted in-depth articles in testing as early as July, and as of August 6th the feature officially went live for English queries on Google.com. Over the weekend, I re-tuned our MozCast 10K engine (which tracks a set of 10,000 queries and their features) to take a deeper look at in-depth articles. This post covers what we know so far.

Variations on a theme

All in-depth article blocks we’re currently tracking have three results – I’ve seen no exception to this rule yet, although that could change as Google collects more data and adapts. There are a few minor variations to how in-depth articles appear. Here’s a complete snippet, which includes an image thumbnail, title, description, publisher icon, publisher, and author (from a search for “presidential candidates“):

Some in-depth article listings don’t have authorship (from a search for “wedding pictures“):

Finally, some listings don’t have publisher icons or names (from a search for “jobs“):

So far, every in-depth article result I’ve seen in the wild has had an image, title, description, and either a publisher name or domain name. Image thumbnails seem to be taken directly from the articles and cropped.

In testing, we saw some in-depth article blocks in the middle of search results, but every example I’ve seen since launch has appeared at the end of the results page – after organic results, but before the bottom ad block. That’s only based on anecdotal evidence, as we’re not currently tracking the position, and Google is likely to mix things up as they move forward and test new variations.

One oddity – in-depth article blocks seem to appear on pages with nine organic results, suggesting that the in-depth block itself may be treated as result #10. It’s getting harder and harder to tell the true count of rankings, but it looks like natural result #10 is getting pushed to page 2, and the block is simply inserted.

Some basic statistics

Across the 10,000 queries that MozCast tracks, 352 displayed in-depth articles the morning of August 12th, which equates to roughly 3.5% of queries. By volume (using Google’s “global” volume metric), these queries accounted for 6.9% of total volume for our 10K data set, suggesting that the search terms tended to be higher-than-average volume.

Google has suggested that in-depth articles will typically trigger for “broad” topics, but that’s a bit vague, so let’s take a look at a few examples from different ends of the spectrum. First off, here are ten high-volume searches (as measured by Google’s “global volume” metric) that triggered in-depth articles on 8/12:

• jobs
• ancestry
• 50 shades of grey
• wedding dresses
• forever21
• bruce springsteen
• smartphone
• led
• pregnancy
• medicare

While these cover the range from a popular novel to a trendy mall store, it does seem like searcher intent is fairly vague in these queries. Someone searching for “led” could be shopping for light bulbs or trying to figure out when Robert Plant is playing near them. The in-depth results for “jobs” contained one article about Steve Jobs:

There’s been some speculation that “broad” might refer to “head” queries (often, single-word searches). Here’s the distribution of the 352 queries by number of words (the number in parentheses is the percentage for the entire 10K data set):

• 1-word = 37.5% (21.1%)
• 2-word = 50.3% (45.6%)
• 3-word = 9.1% (24.4%)
• 4-word = 2.6% (7.0%)
• 5+-word = 0.6% (2.0%)

It’s important to note that the keyword set we use does not contain very long-tail queries and is generally skewed toward shorter phrases. The average word count of all 352 queries is 1.80. For reference, the average word count for our entire 10K data set is 2.24 – so, Google does seem to be leaning a bit toward shorter queries. For reference, here are the five longest queries that showed in-depth articles in our data set:

• church of jesus christ of latter day saints
• the girl with the dragon tattoo movie
• department of homeland security
• post traumatic stress disorder
• mitt romney for president

Our 10K engine tracks a wide variety of queries (by volume, competitiveness, length, industry, etc.), but they do tend a bit toward commercial keywords. We don’t have exact data on brand vs. non-brand queries or commercial vs. informational, but it does appear that in-depth queries are appearing across a wide range of intent.

The news connection

Clearly, it’s hard not to see a news and big media connection in these in-depth articles. Are in-depth articles a replacement for news results? No (at least not for now) – many of the results we tracked had both in-depth articles and a news box. For example, a search for the popular novel “50 Shades of Grey” showed standard news results:

…as well as in-depth articles (note, that there’s no overlap between the articles):

Are posts with news results more likely to show in-depth articles? It certainly looks that way. Across our entire 10K data set, 16.8% of queries contained a news result block on August 12th. For that same time period, 55.7% of queries with in-depth articles contained news results. There’s almost definitely some algorithmic connection between these two entities.

The big winners (so far)

So, given the news connection, do the major news sources have an advantage? At least for now, it seems that way. The 352 searches with in-depth articles on August 12th contained 1,056 articles, which were housed on 123 unique root domains. The top 10 root domains accounted for almost 57% of the total allotment of in-depth articles. Here are the top 10, in order:

1. nytimes.com (20.4%)
2. wsj.com (6.1%)
3. newyorker.com (4.5%)
4. guardian.co.uk (4.3%)
5. wired.com (4.1%)
6. vanityfair.com (3.9%)
7. businessweek.com (3.8%)
8. nymag.com (3.3%)
9. theatlantic.com (3.3%)
10. thedailybeast.com (3.2%)

Within our data set, the New York Times alone accounted for one-fifth of the articles listed in in-depth article blocks. Most of the heavy hitters were generally considered news sites – other big brands like Yahoo.com and MSN.com had isolated articles, but Google didn’t seem to show them any particular favoritism.

To be fair, some smaller news sites and niche sites did show up in the list. Here’s an in-depth article listing from the West Virginia Gazette, for example (from a search for “routers“):

Here’s an example of a niche publication, Yoga Journal, getting listed (from a search for “knee pain“):

Clearly, big publications have an early-mover advantage right now, but what’s unclear is whether that advantage is baked into the in-depth article algorithm or is just a consequence of other authority and content factors. So, that leads us to the million-dollar question: what does it take to break into the in-depth box?

Getting in on the action

While big news organizations have an advantage, there’s no compelling evidence that in-depth articles are a private club. In fact, Google has already posted a support document with advice on getting listed in in-depth articles. I’ll give you a quick-and-dirty summary:

• Use Schema.org article markup
• Set up authorship markup
• Set up a Google+ account, including your logo
• Properly handle paginated articles
• Use “first click free” for paywall content

Ana Hoffman wrote a good post that goes into more detail on these in-depth article support factors. Of course, these aren’t sufficient conditions to get listed – domain authority, content quality, and traditional ranking factors undoubtedly are also at play here. The good news is that Google is telling us that you do have a chance at getting in, and there are ways to help the process.

I suspect Google will be experimenting with and expanding in-depth articles over the next few months, so all of this data is preliminary and subject to change. If you’re a news site or have reputable, long-form content, I’d strongly consider at least putting the signals above into place. If anyone manages to break into an in-depth box, we’d love to hear your story.

Update (August 14, 2013)

Just one day after this post went live, Google is already playing with the format. Here’s a new look for the “50 shades of grey” in-depth box, where only the first result shows full data:

The block is now in the #8 organic position (not #10), and I’m seeing other blocks moving around. Expect Google to test and tweak this feature significantly in the coming weeks.

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Posted by Annie Cushing

Image from the National Archives

If you want to see how your competitors are gaining a strategic advantage, one of the best tactics to overtake them is to take a deep dive into their backlinks. They leave breadcrumbs behind that reveal their best tactics. Then pivot (no pun intended), glean ideas from their brilliance, and do it even better!

Required skill: pivot tables

If you don’t know how to use pivot tables, you need to check out this video walkthrough. I teach you everything you need to know and then some.

Download example pivot table

I redacted my client’s data from the pivot table in the Excel sheet, but you can get an idea of how I pulled together the data in the “Raw Data” tab and then see how I organized my pivot table in that tab. You can, of course, organize yours however you feel is best. But hopefully this will provide a good jumping-off point. I also sorted my pivot table by domain authority in descending order and then filtered out links from [free-subdomain].wordpress.com.

You can download the Excel workbook from Dropbox.

Steps to pull data together

Step 1: Pull your site’s (or client’s) backlinks — using Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO, ahrefs, or whatevs — as well as a few of your main competitors. Then pull them together into a formatted table.

Step 2: Add another column and label it “Site.” What I typically do is add the domain (without the http:// or www to minimize noise) and double-click the bottom-right corner of the cell to fill down to the bottom of the data set. Rinse and repeat each time you add a new batch of backlinks. When you finish, you’ll have a single table that contains a mashup of backlinks.

Step 3: Extract the domains from the backlink URLs using the LEFT and SEARCH functions. If you haven’t done this before, I demonstrate how in this video tutorial. (Or you can download the demo workbook from the post and just copy the formulas.)

Step 4: Create your pivot table using these settings:

Step 5: As a general rule, I don’t like how Excel merely indents rows in the default, “Compact” pivot table format. In our data set here, where we have three different values pulled down in rows (Domain, Site, and URL). This can cause your rows to get really congested, and it can be hard to differentiate them. For this reason, if I pull multiple values into the Rows field list, I prefer the Outline layout. You can check it out in the Excel file download.

To set your pivot table to “Outline,” click on any cell in the pivot table and go to Pivot Table Tools > Design tab > Layout > Report Layout > Show in Outline Form (Mac: PivotTable tab > Design > Layout > Outline Layout).

Step 6: I pulled individual observations into text boxes to the left of the pivot table. I used text boxes for a couple reasons:

• I didn’t want to mess up the heights of rows inside my pivot table.
• I could attach links to the text boxes that linked to the individual cells in the pivot table.

Step 7: Dive into the data and start reverse-engineering strategies (using the observations I pulled out as a template, if you’d like). I can assure you there are many more to excavate from that data set!

Video tutorial

For you visual learners out there, I pulled together a 10-minute video walkthrough of some of the key steps I took to organize the data for analysis.

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Posted by CraigBradford

One of the things that I like most about Google Analytics is that it can be as simple or as complex as you like. Out of the box it’s very easy to use. Without much experience, you can quickly see the basics, like the amount of traffic you receive as well as the medium and source of traffic. But: We have a problem. The problem is that that’s where most people stop. Too many people are making bad decisions by looking at Google Analytics data from a 30,000-foot view. With a little more work you can reveal some quick insights that could reveal easy CRO wins. To demonstrate how, I’ll cover a couple of advanced segments that I like to use and explain how to set each of them up using custom variables, event tracking, and filters. Advanced segments are a huge area; you can make almost unlimited variations, so I’ve just picked a few that will hopefully inspire you to create some advanced segments of your own (I’d love to hear about them in the comments).

Attribution

Before doing anything, it’s important to have a data set that you can trust, and that starts with proper attribution. If you haven’t already read Annie Cushing’s blog post “Take Credit Where Credit’s Due,” I highly recommend it, as it goes into a lot more detail on attribution. The full video is also available on the Distilled store.

Attribution starts with ensuring the correct mediums and sources are getting credit for the sales and actions they generate. The opposite is also true: You don’t want good channels getting diluted by cross-contamination of bad channels. By default, Google has the basics covered, as shown below.

But for some websites, that “(none)” category can make up a significant portion of your traffic. Referral traffic isn’t great either, as it doesn’t tell you about the “why” part. Was it a press release that drove a lot of that traffic? Or was it email?

Thankfully, we have the ability to do campaign tracking using URL parameters that can help make these mediums more useful. The medium that’s usually impacted by this the most is email. By default, Google groups email into the referral bucket.

To avoid this, you can create a new “email” medium by tagging all links in emails with URL parameters. Explaining tagging in detail is out of the scope of this post, so I’m going to assume you know how to do it. If you don’t, you can read up on how to track emails in this post.

#Protip: The most common objection people have to using URL tagging is that it creates ugly URLs for users. Here’s a solution.

Let’s assume I want to track the people that visit the Annie Cushing video I recommended. The URL might look something like this:

http://www.distilled.net/store/sl-bos-2013-cushing/?utm_source=moz.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=annie+cushing+video

Pretty horrible. But your users never need to see it, thanks to some HTML5 goodness. You put the link in some anchor text, such as click here. Then on that landing page you would add something like this:

_gaq.push(function() {
window.history.pushState('','', 'some-page');
});

This means after the Google Analytics code has fired and collected all the attribution data from the horrible-looking parameters, the URL will be changed to whatever you set in the quotes. In this case it would change the URL to:

http://www.distilled.net/store/sl-bos-2013-cushing/some-page

But it could be anything you like. See this blog post from Rob Ousbey on the topic.

The downside to this is if people then share or link to that page it will 404, so if you just want to chop off the parameters, just replace the “some page” part with a ‘#’. There’s probably a better way to do this so that there’s no #, but I’m not a developer so I settle for “good enough” on this kind of thing.

So, to be clear, the action here is to get all your attribution set up correctly. For lots of details on how to do that, see Annie’s post. Doing so will allow you to do some proper CPA analysis for the various channels you use.

Tracking form errors

Regardless of how easy you make your checkout process, there will always be people that struggle with the forms, so we want to know how and where these people are having problems. If we manage that, we make more sales. There are solutions such as Clicktale that allow you to analyse the forms on your site, but they don’t allow you to tie that together with other metrics from your GA, such as conversion rates. To do this, I want to use Google Analytics event tracking to create an event any time someone fails to do something correctly on any of the fields in the form. Events use the following format:

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', action, opt_label, opt_value, opt_noninteraction)

In my case I want to set:

• Category = Form Error
• Action = Submit
• Opt_label = A way to identify the field that caused the error, for example “Phone number” or “Post Code”

You then need to set this to fire only when there is a validation error on the page. A validation error is that annoying red text that appears when you mess something up on a form. From a technical point of view there are a couple of different ways this can be done, depending whether the form is validated on the client side via JavaScript or on the server side (in which case the page will be reloaded).

Server side

On the HTML that gets sent to the browser when an error occurs, you’ll need to add the event tracking to the text that fires next to each of the fields. Doing it this way allows you to not only see users that had problems, but will also let you see specifically what fields people have the most trouble with. You can then slice and dice that data however you like in GA to find other things like browser OS, etc.

Client side

If the validation is being done on the client side using something like JavaScript, the same process needs to be used, but the events will need to be fired by the script that creates the errors.

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'form error', 'submit', 'phone number']);

Tracking email unsubscribers for content analysis

Most email management services will allow you to see stats like open rates, number of people unsubscribing, etc., but they don’t give you many insights into why those people unsubscribed — which is what we really need to know. To help get some insights it can be useful to find out which content those people have read the most, as this could potentially let you see what kind of content your audience doesn’t like. You could even go as far as looking at authors.

To do this, you’ll need an email provider that lets you add some custom code to the unsubscribe page. At Distilled we use MailChimp, which I know has this feature, but I’m not sure about others. You can then use whatever method you like to bucket these users, you could add a custom variable or event tracking to your Google analytics code, like this:

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'email', 'unsubscribed']);

The advantage of events is you can use them with goals, which would allow you to track over time and set up alerts for spikes in unsubscription rates.

Once this is set up, you’ll want to create an “unsubscribed” advanced segment in Google Analytics for the event name like that shown below in the example:

Once you have these people in a group, you can start to slice the data however you like to find trends among the people who don’t want to be on your list anymore.

Logged in/out

Depending on the type of site you have, it may or may not make sense to create segments based on whether your users are logged in or out. For example, you may have a different checkout process if you’re logged in. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could see the difference between conversion rates between logged-in and logged-out users? Or compare the behaviors of logged-in users compared to logged-out users? Thankfully, this is pretty easy to do. In fact if you look at the source code of this page, you can see how. Do a search in the source code for “setCustomVar” and you’ll see what I mean. You’ll see one of a few options but they will all follow a format like this:

This sets a custom variable with “user-type” as “visitor.” If you’re logged in and a pro member, you might see “Pro.” From a CRO perspective, the point in doing this is you can see how different groups of people act on the site and use that information to increase the conversion rate of each group. You’ll typically find that logged-out users convert less, as they have extra steps in the process, but you can always optimize the registration process to make it as painless as possible. When possible, I’d always take the Amazon approach and leave people logged in as long as possible, and have their credit card details saved to allow for quick and painless payment.

Also, once you can track people that are logged in, you can create advanced segments for things like “logged in users that added an item to their cart but didn’t buy.” These are easy pickings; on the server side you can segment by these users and send them an email to remind them that they have items in their shopping cart that they are just one click away from buying.

Find the “whales”

Photo by Gerard Lacz

I got this idea from Avinash. You can read the full post here. The idea is that you create a segment of users that typically spend more than the average customer, hence the term “whale.” This is also why it’s a good idea to have your attribution tracking set up correctly from the start, as you need to know where those whales came from as well as how much they cost to acquire compared to the average customer.

To do this, segment by users that bought more than a certain number of items:

Image credit

Once you have this data, you can begin to focus on the other data that’s available to you, such as the medium and source of those users, and double down on the best channels.

That’s all for now, I hope you’ve found this useful and I’d love to hear some of the custom segments or interesting ways you use Google Analytics in the comments.

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Posted by randfish

For reference, here’s a still image of this week’s whiteboard:

Video Transcription

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

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Posted by Dr-Pete

At MozCon last month, I gave a talk titled “Beyond 10 Blue Links” that included 85 screenshots of Google SERP features that went beyond the traditional organic listing:

I purposely tried to overwhelm people and to show just how much the landscape is changing, but the truth is that this was just one part of the big picture. So, I’d like to take a deeper journey today – a trip through Google’s “answer box” – to show not only how SERPs are changing, but how the answer box reveals the direction and power of Google’s Knowledge Graph.

What’s an answer box?

An “answer box” is a SERP feature, usually displayed in a light-gray box, that occurs above the organic results (left column) and tries to directly answer a question. For example, if you were wondering what a “SERP” is and Googled “define serp”, you’d see this:

Most answer boxes are primarily text, contain a relatively short answer (when possible), and may give limited information about the source of the answer. Seeing is believing, so let’s jump right in.

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(I) People & Relationships

Everybody loves celebrities, right? According to the supermarket checkout aisle, they’re just better than the rest of us. Let’s start with some answer boxes about people.

1. “Is Justin Timberlake married”

Sorry, ladies (and gentleman, depending on your persuasion), the short answer is: “yes”. This same wedding also took Jessica Biel off the market – I feel like the government should have gotten involved.

2. “Ben Stiller’s dad”

You can also check out other relationships, like famous parents:

3. “Jerry Stiller’s kids”

Some relationships are many-to-one. Here’s an answer box with richer content:

4. “How tall was Abraham Lincoln”

Was Abe really that tall, or were all the other Old-Timey people just really short, so he seemed tall by comparison? Turns out, he was pretty tall.

5. “How old is Bryan Adams”

So, the other day, I’m listening to “Summer of ’69” and I started wondering how old Bryan Adams actually was in 1969. Turns out, he was barely 10 years old, and he wants us to believe he started a band? I’m on to you, Bryan Adams!

6. “How old is Mickey Mouse”

I’m not crying – that’s just fairy dust in my eye (hat tip to @scheidja)!

7. “Walt Disney’s birthday”

Of course, we can also look at the other side of the circle of life:

8. “Jesus birthday”

Interestingly, Google includes much more than just data about contemporary folks:

9. “Genghis Khan death”

Death information (and sometimes location) is available for historical figures, as well:

10. “Gandhi assassination”

Other notable dates related to people are also available, although not as consistently:

11. “Chaucer buried”

A serious note: If you’re ever in Westminster Abbey, take a moment to realize that your standing on the graves of kings, queens, and poets.

12. “Justin Timberlake job”

What does JT actually do? Pretty much everything, because he’s amazing:

13. “Conan O’Brien education”

Did you know that Conan went to Harvard? You do now.

14. “Paul Hogan nationality”

I’d like to apologize to our friends down under for our bizarre fascination with you during the 80s. Point of fact, though: Crocodile Dundee is legitimately Australian.

15. “Fun singer”

I don’t know if he’s actually fun or not, but kudos on capturing the SERP:

16. “Gandhi Bacon number”

If you’ve ever wondered why the internet exists, here’s your answer (hat-tip to @BradyDCallahan).

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(II) Athletes & Sports

Athletes are people, too, or so ESPN tells me. The sports realm has a number of unique answer boxes.

17. “How much does Beckham make”

Oddly, this seems uniquely available to athletes, for the most part. No word on what Victoria Beckham is cashing in these days.

18. “Kobe Bryant’s number”

When you need to settle a bar bet, answer boxes look good on mobile, too.

19. “Peyton Manning’s team”

In case you’re like me, and occasionally get the Manning brothers confused…

20. “Where is Tiger”

The format isn’t quite your typical answer box, but this is a great example of just how much Google is interpreting queries. Note that this only appears near active tournament dates (hat tip to @scheidja)

Fun fact: We originally saw this for “Where is Roger”, and it brought up results for Roger Federer. Of course, we all know that there’s only one Roger.

21. “Cubs score”

If you’re a Cubs fan, like me, and in perpetual need of torturing yourself, Google’s got you covered:

22. “NL Central standings”

You can also access division/league stats for many pro sports. Keep in mind that these are seasonal, and only seem to appear during the active season for any particular sport.

23. “Cubs schedule”

Here’s an expanding schedule of upcoming games:

24. “Where do the Yankees play”

If you’re really new to the sports world, fear not – there’s an answer box for you, too:

Fun fact: This answer box does not actually say “Duh”. Seriously, though.

25. “How many seats at Yankee stadium”

That’s a lot of hot dogs. Inferior, New York hot dogs, that is.

26. “Stanley Cup champion”

Yeah, baby. Even we Chicagoans get to win something now and then.

27. “NHL Stanley Cup”

This isn’t currently active, but during playoffs and championship series, you can see the entire schedule and historical scores:

28. “Tournament brackets”

For March Madness 2013, Google launched an entire bracketology feature (not currently active):

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(III) Landmarks & Places

People shouldn’t have all the fun. Places have feelings, too. Ok, they don’t have feelings, but they do have answer boxes.

29. “Who built Wrigley Field”

Historical data is available for many major landmarks:

30. “When was the Empire State Building built”

Did you realize that the first skyscraper didn’t exist until after the elevator was invented? People are lazy.

31. “How tall is the Space Needle”

It’s been just over 50 years since someone thought: “Let’s put a UFO on a stick!”

32. “How many floors is the Sears Tower”

It’ll always be the Sears Tower to me, unless we also get the Arnold Tower and Mr. Drummond Tower. Then, I might come around.

33. “Population of Chicago”

Some answer boxes have specialized, rich content. This population trend graph is one of the more interesting ones:

34. “Size of Chicago”

You probably never actually wondered this, but I got a little crazy writing this post:

35. “Chicago unemployment rate”

Not one of our happier stats, but definitely an interesting, rich answer box:

36. “Seattle weather”

When I’m packing for the home office, this comes in handy. Google has all but taken over this space from the major weather sites. If you want local weather, you can just search “weather” or “temperature”.

37. “Seattle Mayor”

When I need to study up on my second home, Google’s there for me:

38. “Washington Governor”

There seem to be answer boxes for most major local, state, and Federal offices.

39. “Capital of Washington”

Note to self: Seattle is not the capital of Washington.

40. “Washington state flower”

You know what Illinois’ state flower is? The violet. Way to overcomplicate things, Washington.

41. “Washington state bird”

Why was learning this stuff so important in school? No one has ever jumped out of an alley and shouted “Quick, what’s your state bird?!”

42. “Canada languages”

What language do they speak in Canadia? It’s Canadese, right?

43. “Canadian currency”

Also, they have money in Canada. Who knew?

44. “Canadian Prime Minister”

It’s like they’re a real country. FYI: you have to actually know the proper form of government to get this answer box – “Canadian President” and “Canadian head honcho” don’t work.

45. “Mexico dialing code”

If you need to call your friends across either border, Google makes it easier for you:

46. “How big is the Pacific Ocean”

“Pretty damned big” would also have been an acceptable answer.

47. “How old is the world”

You can ask questions about just about anything georgraphic, including the entire earth (hat-tip to @zafeuer).

48. “Radius of Saturn”

Then again, why restrict yourself to earth-based factoids?

49. “How far is Saturn”

Ok, I meant “How far is Saturn from the earth”, but this just goes to show you that Google still has a few kinks to work out (hat-tip to @IAmPhilSharp).

50. “How far is Saturn from the sun”

Sometimes, you just have to be specific. Oddly, distance from the earth is not available, but distance from the sun is.

51. “How far to Seattle”

Of course, the “how far” answer box does have legitimate uses. I wonder this every time I get a “Free Cupcakes” email from the office (which is about 17 times per day).

52. “Who discovered Neptune”

Here’s a people and planets crossover answer box. Apparently, it took a lot of people to find Neptune.

Fun fact: John “Couch” Adams was the lesser known and lazier brother of our 6th president, John Quincy Adams.

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(IV) Conversions & Calculators

Questions about numbers and units often yield interactive answer boxes. Here’s a list of conversion and calculator features.

53. “How big is an acre”

Building on our geography queries, you can easily convert units of area:

54. “70 Fahrenheit to Celsius”

This one’s handy for the MozCast followers out there (don’t worry, building this in is definitely on our to-do list):

55. “5 years in hours”

This is how long I spent in graduate school. Funny, it felt like at least 50,000 hours.

56. “How many millimeters in a cubit”

Some questions yield direct answers, and not a conversion box. It could have something to do with no one under the age of 103 ever measuring things in cubits.

57. “Bits in a terabyte”

Here’s a conversion calculator for us geeks. My first hard drive was 10 MB. Now, you can get a 1 TB external HD for $79.99. By the time I finish this post, they’ll be $39.99.

58. “Dollars to Euros”

Google completely took over currency conversion queries. You can also just search for “currency converter”.

59. “What is the speed of light”

Some specific scientific values have direct answer boxes. You can also look up mathematical constants, like “pi” and “Euler’s constant”.

60. “7 * 6”

Enter a mathematical expression, and you’ll get a scientific calculator answer box. Expressions can be pretty elaborate, including parentheses.

61. “Answer to life the universe and everything”

Of course, if 42 is really the answer you want, then you should be asking the right question.

62. “sin(x)”

Enter a function or complex equation, and you’ll get back a two-dimensional graph.

63. “sin(x)+cos(y)”

With the right multivariate equations, you can trigger a three-dimensional graph.

64. “How many calories in a taco”

Finally, the most important calculator of all: the taco calculator. Ok, it’s actually the nutrition calculator. Sadly, Google will not answer the question “How good is cheese?”

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(V) Dates & Times

We covered a few date-based answer boxes in the people section (like birthdates), but that’s just the tip of the iceberg for date and time questions.

65. “When is Thanksgiving”

You can easily find the dates of many upcoming holidays, although a few minor holidays seem to be missing.

66. “When was Hanukkah”

In some cases, you can query the last occurrence of a holiday. Google also shows ranges for events that cover multiple dates.

67. “Mothers Day 2020”

Add a year to get the dates for future holidays. The year 2020 was as far ahead as I could get Google to currently go, but this may vary depending on the event.

68. “Fall Equinox”

This is the proper form of the question “What happened to summer?!”.

69. “Time”

Google is personalizing more answer boxes, and queries like “time” work now. If you want the time in another location, enter sometimg like “local time Seattle”.

70. “Sunrise Seattle”

On the days when Seattle actually has sun, Google will tell you when that alleged sun rises and sets.

71. “Timer 5 minutes”

Forget your stopwatch (and your iPhone, and your tablet…)? You can set a timer of just about any length directly through a search query. Added bonus: The alert is more obnoxious than a late-80s car alarm.

72. “Length of Martian day”

Don’t you hate it when you’ve got a call scheduled with Martian clients and… ok, I really have no idea why you’d ever need this.

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(VI) Movies, Media, & More

You can’t spell “celebrity” without “le brit”, which is French for “The British”. Ok, half of that’s not true, and none of it is relevant. Here are some answer boxes about stuff celebrities do.

73. “When was Star Wars released”

Here’s a query I run when I want to feel l old. I was almost seven, for the record (hat-tip to @adamcarson).

74. “Who directed The 300”

I ask Google this question about twice a week, just to make sure I never watch any more of his movies.

75. “The 300 sequel”

Unfortunately, Google has no regard for my feelings:

76. “The Dark Knight rating”

Is it too early to let my 3-year-old watch the latest Batman saga? Ok, yeah, it probably is.

77. “Rocky writer”

Did you know that Stallone not only wrote the script to Rocky, but he did it in three days? Give Sly a little credit.

78. “James Bond movies”

Here’s a slightly odd one – a not even remotely complete list of Bond films:

79. “Narnia movie list”

The much shorter Narnia series gets a complete list, including thumbnails. Other queries, like “Harry Potter movies” generate a Knowledge Graph carousel. Google seems to be experimenting.

80. “When did The Simpsons debut”

Purists will probably note that The Simpsons actually debuted on the Tracey Ullman show in 1987. This is why purists have no friends (hat-tip to @adamcarson).

81. “Super Friends final episode”

Farewell, Zan, Jayna, and Gleek. We hardly knew thee.

82. “Sunny in Philadelphia network”

The curse of TiVo is that I honestly have no idea when any show airs or what channel it’s on.

83. “Greatest American Hero theme song”

“Believe it or not, I’m walking on air. I never thought I could feel so FREE-EE-EEE…” You’re welcome.

84. “Honey Boo Boo genre”

When I want to remember which genre never to watch, I run this search. Ok, so I watch Top Chef. And Top Chef: Masters. And The Voice. And Pimp My Ride. STOP JUDGING ME!

85. “Harry Potter author”

Once upon a time, there were these things called books. Don’t worry – there’s an app for that now.

86. “Grand Theft Auto 5 release”

If you can’t wait for whatever it is you kids can’t wait for these days, then here you go (hat-tip to @KrisRoadruck).

87. “Wicked composer”

It’s not quite as great as coming up at the top of “wicked awesome composer,” but I’m still pretty jealous.

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(VII) Companies & Brands

For all the talk of big brands dominating the SERPs, it’s surprising how few of them currently have Knowledge Graph data. Here are a few examples of brand answer boxes.

88. “Amazon stock”

Google’s rich stock ticker answer box is probably one of the most obvious examples of company-related data:

89. “When was Microsoft founded”

You can get direct answers for a few questions about major companies, including their founding date (hat-tip to @wilreynolds).

90. “Amazon founder”

This is also the new answer to “Who owns the Washington Post?” (although that doesn’t get an answer box).

91. “Samsung headquarters”

You can look up the corporate headquarters for many large companies.

92. “Best Buy customer service”

Finally, a few companies pull up customer service phone numbers, but this data seems fairly spotty.

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(VIII) Miscellaneous

Here are a few answer boxes that didn’t fit neatly into any of my other categories.

93. “UA 241”

Want your flight status in about 17 clicks less than it takes on the airlines’ sites? Just search your flight number.

94. “Flights to Seattle”

This isn’t technically an answer box (See the “Sponsored” notification in the upper-right), but it goes to show how much the line between organic and paid content is starting to blur.

95. “Define googol”

Some words will pull up definitions in an answer box. Google may be testing an even richer definition box, which includes word origins and usage data.

96. “Search in mandarin”

Translation is available for some terms, but the implementation is inconsistent at best.

97. “Mono symptoms”

Google has experimented heavily in the health/medical niche. Here’s a detailed symptoms answer box that pulls data from three major health sites.

98. “Cancer treatment”

I’m not sure cancer treatment can or should be summed up in a couple of paragraphs, but Google is apparently going to try.

99. “Poison control”

This doesn’t fit the typical format of an answer box, but here’s a situation where people obviously can benefit from a quick answer.

100. “How fast is an F-22 Raptor”

A few vehicles have statistics available in answer boxes. I would have expected more cars (especially high-end models) to have them, but I’ve mostly found aircraft data (hat-tip to @scheidja).

101. “Boeing 787 engine”

Here’s one I wouldn’t expect to have an answer box – the engines on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

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The Knowledge Graph Connection

So, where do these answer boxes come from? Some, like stock tickers and weather charts, are clearly custom designed and can involve exclusive data partnerships. When it comes to the factoids, though, most of these answers come directly from Google’s Knowledge Graph.

Let’s go back to the very first example. Here’s a portion of the Knowledge Graph entry for Justin Timberlake:

Notice the circled factoid, which just happens to match our first answer box. So, let’s try a little experiment. Let’s pick something you’ve probably never searched for: as a kid, I had a fascination with the Red Baron, who flew a plane called the Fokker Dr.I. If you search for “Fokker Dr.I”, you’ll see this KG entry:

So, what if we picked a factoid, like the Fokker’s wingspan? Sure enough, if you search Google for “Fokker Dr.I wingspan”, you get this answer box:

“Fokker Dr.I top speed”, “…length”, and “…first flight” all return answer boxes, but, oddly, “…manufacturer” doesn’t. I’d say that about 70-80% of the factoids I found in Knowledge Graph entries could be used to generate answer boxes, but sometimes Google was very picky about how the question was worded.

This all goes to show that the Knowledge Graph is much more than just an isolated box of information in the right-hand column. It’s fundamentally changing the nature of organic results and driving many of Google’s direct answers to questions. As KG continues to expand, it’s going to be critical to understand how it impacts your money keywords.

It also goes to show that these 101 answer boxes are just a sampling of what’s available in the wide world of Google’s Knowledge Graph. Have any favorites of your own? Be sure to share them in the comments.

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