Google Is Showing Fewer Organic Links In SERPs

A new report by Searchmetrics about search in 2016 has revealed that Google's search engine results pages (SERPs) now show fewer organic results then they did last year. The report looked at around half a million of the most “general” and “frequently used” terms on Google in the US. According to the study, the first Google SERP now shows an average of 8.5 organic links, compared to the 10 organic links it showed last year. Searchmetrics also found that nearly all search results included boxed content such as video, images or app suggestions, with a quarter of searches featuring at least one video box, 90% of which are hosted on YouTube. This number is reduced, however, when looking at smartphones, where only 72% of integrated video results are hosted on YouTube. Additionally, the report found that 10.9% of desktop searches, and 4.4% of smartphones searches, had 'Direct Answer' boxes at the top of the page. Searchmetrics says that to appear in these direct answer boxes, content must be “well written”, and “appear on high-authority sites”. 

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