Google recently announced that it is introducing two new features of English and US-based searches. One of these features is showing a ‘highly cited label’ in the ‘Top Stories’ results, and the other is making enhancements to the ‘about this result’ feature for rapidly changing/developing topics. These new features could have an influence your website traffic, so it’s important to take the time to understand how they could affect you and your business. In this blog, we explore what these changes will entail, what they could mean for your business, and more.

A ‘highly-cited’ label stamped on news stories will help web browsers to locate information that has been mentioned (i.e. cited) by a lot of other news organizations. This feature, which will be available soon in the United States and other English-speaking countries, will appear on ‘Top Stories’ within Google’s mobile search results. 

The aim of this new feature is to “elevate original reporting” (according to Google), which is an area Google has previously said they want to improve on. This label is intended to reassure browsers that the source they’re viewing is high-quality, trustworthy and useful because it has been cited and viewed by lots of other journalists. The aim is that this will help browsers to find the most relevant and current information for any news topic that they want to read more about. 

A Google spokesperson has also said that this ‘highly cited’ label is building on the company’s efforts to check facts and prevent the spread of misleading information. But how do news sources/articles actually get this label? This will all come down to the web pages being linked to and cited by other websites and news sources. So, if you want this label, the first step is to create a worthy news piece that contains truthful, current and relevant information – and then, naturally, people will begin to cite and share your content.

Google announced that this new feature would be rolling out a few weeks ago, and it is now live in US English mobile search results. We assume it will be arriving in the UK, Israel and other countries shortly!

Google is also introducing an ‘about this result’ button, which will inform browsers about any potential issues with the link/source they are viewing. This will be especially relevant for topics that are rapidly evolving. In this case, Google will display a notification that says ‘it looks like these results are changing quickly’ (this indicates a rapidly evolving topic). Browsers can then click to learn more about the result, including useful information on fact-checking. Google has also increased the available information within the ‘about this result’ section so that browsers can find out more about the quality of the content they are viewing.

These new features can have an impact on how your website displays in Google’s search engine results. If a news story has a ‘highly cited’ label, then it will likely receive a higher click-through rate than a story without this label. As for the other feature, if you create a news article or web page about a breaking news topic and Google displays the ‘it looks like these results are changing quickly’ notice, you might get less traffic because this notice could make people warier of your content and therefore more likely to navigate away. You don’t need to worry too much though, because Google does prompt browsers to return to the content later once more information is available – so any negative impact on traffic should be short-lived.

These new features are all part of Google’s ongoing efforts to produce the most reliable, up to date and trustworthy information possible. This effort is becoming increasingly essential in this modern world of fake news and misinformation highways. Basically, it’s more important than ever to focus on creating great content – but hey, we’re sure you do that anyway. If you have any questions about these changes or what they could mean for your brand or content, don’t hesitate to give us a call or drop us an email.