Google’s Alternative Feeds and Secondary SERPs & The Increasing Challenge To Tracking Clicks and Impressions
Most site owners are familiar with Discover and Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), but Google keeps adding more ways for content to surface across its ecosystem. And with the addition of alternative feeds and secondary SERPs, it’s becoming incredibly hard to track where your content is surfacing and how much traffic is coming from those surfaces. For site owners, I’m finding many don’t realize their content can surface in those other areas, or that alternative feeds and search engine result pages (SERPs) even exist.
Below, I’ll cover some of the more prominent alternative feeds and secondary SERPs that Google has in place now, including how you can track each one (or not).
Let’s go down the rabbit hole together.
“SGE while browsing”:
Google launched SGE while browsing in August, a few months after SGE in the SERPs initially launched. It’s like an SGE assistant while browsing articles across the web. Beyond providing AI key points from an article, “SGE while browsing” also provides an entire SERP of content, including video. Of course, we have no idea how many people are using the feature, but it could be driving some traffic now for you.
Tracking:
Good luck. I don’t believe Google Search Console (GSC) is providing any SGE tracking overall yet, and that includes “SGE while browsing”. Here is what it looks like while browsing content across the web.
Google Explore:
I’ve covered Explore heavily in the past on my blog, and yep, it’s still there in the mobile SERPs. When speaking with site owners, I find many don’t even know Explore is triggering and how often it’s showing up for important queries. As I’ve covered on Twitter, it’s also now appearing after just a scroll or two for some queries (so it’s extremely visible in those cases). That’s important, since Explore could displace your mobile rankings.
Tracking:
Explore is actually tracked now in GSC since it’s part of the core SERP. The problem is you have no idea when your content is ranking in Explore versus a traditional SERP. But, it’s just mobile so you can track the difference in rankings per query across desktop and mobile to possibly understand when you are ranking in Explore. Here is a gif of Explore in action.
Rankings don’t reset when Explore appears so it’s a continuation of rankings (just in a different format). i.e. If Explore triggers on page three of the SERPs, and your content ranks in the top spot in Explore, then it would be ranking #31 (or whatever rank position begins at that point). It won’t be #1 just in Explore (because there is no tracking in GSC specifically for Explore).
“New for you” and topics from Discover:/>
I’ve been heavily covering the new “following topics” functionality in Search and Discover, and it’s been incredibly interesting to see how that has changed my Discover feed. Once you follow a topic, you can easily tap each topic in Discover to launch a fresh SERP. But, there’s an addition to the SERP, which is the New for you feature. That feature provides a carousel of content, which could be articles, Perspectives, social media content, and more. It pushes down the traditional SERP, which is important to understand. That means your number one ranking might be way down the viewport on mobile.