When you search Google, the results will vary based on the term you search for, type of device you’re searching from, the content timeliness, and your proximity to a business. Here are what the organic positions mean and what they look like:
Standard Unpaid Listing
A standard unpaid listing has a tile, URL, and a description.
Local Knowledge Panel
The local knowledge panel lists contact information and addresses that are pulled from business data.
Local “Pack” Results
This group of listings is also tied to map and pin results, and is a list of 2-7 results with pins and addresses.
Google Map and Pins
These results appear at the top of the page and are plotted on a map, so users can view the proximity of a business to their location.
Local “Near” Results
These local results consist of three results that are returned when you search for “{search term} near {your location}.”.
The Knowledge Graph and Google My Business
When searchers look for your business name—and you’ve set up Google My Business—a knowledge graph appears with business information. This data includes your contact details, street directions, ratings, photos, Google reviews, and more.
Social Results
If the individual who searches has a Google+ account and is signed in, he or she will be able to see your recent Google+ posts.
Image Results
These results display images related to the search term.
Video Results
Video results appear with brief information and a video preview.
News Results
These are timely articles that cover information related to the search terms.
In-depth Articles
Similar to news articles, these are evergreen articles that are deemed related to the search terms.
Sitelinks
The number one position in the search results page can receive expanded sitelinks, with up to six internal pages from their website.
Review Mark-Up
Highlights reviews and ratings for a business based on Google consumer reviews, on the right hand side of your screen.
Related Searches
Google provides other search terms it feels would be useful should you want different offerings.
Omitted Results
There are several reasons for Google to omit pages in your site. A page might be omitted if Google finds it to be worthless for users, or the most common reason is because Google omits pages that have same similar content (duplicate content). For Real Estate this could be because you have the property listed on multiple real estate portals e.g realestate.com.au, realestateview.com.au, domain.com.au, homely.com.au and your own website. Google looks at this as duplicate content so only displays a version or in some cases a couple versions that come from the website with the highest ‘authority’. Most of the time this is realestate.com.au because of the volume of traffic this website receives, as well as the volume of content realestate.com.au has on their website, so it is regarded as the highest ‘authority’ for this search and all the other results are omitted.
Open House Listings
If your real estate agency uses feed form to offer open house listings, you can add that data to your website so it appears within Google’s results for related searches.
Hopefully, this helps you understand the types of unpaid search results on Google and what they look like. Our How Google Search Results Work series will continue, so stay tuned for the next post Tips for How to Rank High in Google Search Results.