{"id":13060,"date":"2020-09-09T10:52:31","date_gmt":"2020-09-09T08:52:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordlift.io\/blog\/en\/?p=13060"},"modified":"2024-07-05T13:40:51","modified_gmt":"2024-07-05T11:40:51","slug":"google-entity-carousels-how-to-earn-the-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordlift.io\/blog\/en\/google-entity-carousels-how-to-earn-the-spot\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Entity Carousels: How to Earn Your Spot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Google Carousels for ranked entities appear when you make searches like \u201ctop 10 seo tools\u201d. These are entities presented as cards in Google SERP<\/a> that can be used to further refine search results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Google Entity Carousel: a list of ranked entities belonging to the same category.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this article I will share a use case<\/strong> and the lessons learned<\/strong> while managing to add back an entity in one of these carousels<\/strong> that had been missing for a long time.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is a Google carousel? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A carousel is a list of entities that users can swipe through to discover entities that belong to the same category<\/strong>. It is highly used in local search results<\/strong> to help users find their favourite restaurant, a top rated hotel with a pool or the best night club. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is a host carousel? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When multiple cards are presented from the same site, it is called host carousel<\/strong>. We can, on Google, use structured data to group entities belonging to the following types: Course<\/a>, Movie<\/a>, Recipe<\/a> and Restaurant<\/a>. There are two options when grouping content: summary pages<\/strong> (these use the schema ItemList class and ListItem that points to separate URLs) and a single, all-in-one-page list<\/strong> where all the elements are on the same page.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Google host carousel for recipes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Resuscitating a long gone entity in Google\u2019s Graph<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start with the beginning of the story. We have been contacted by Jean-Francois Rousset<\/strong>, the SEO Manager<\/strong> for the Stamford American International School in Singapore. Jean-Francois<\/strong> runs his own consultancy business (Blumark SA<\/a>) and since last August he had been restlessly working on a branding issue that the school had way before involving him as SEO. The Stamford American International School had lost a prominent spot in a Google Entity Carousel<\/strong> for one of their most important queries<\/strong>: \u201cinternational school singapore<\/em>\u201d. I liked the case and Jean-Francois liked the simplicity of WordLift that could help him improve structured data<\/a><\/strong> while focusing on this particular issue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here is what this post is all about – in the carousel we also see the refinement chips: International school and Singapore.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here below a quick glance at the keyword on Semrush; it was immediately clear to Jean-Francois and our team that having lost the spot in that specific carousel had a clear business impact<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re interested in a practical application, check out our detailed Google Carousel case study<\/a>. Discover how we leveraged rich results to enhance visibility for mountain huts in Austria!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do Google Carousels work? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

While their presence on the serp is quite relevant, little is known about these list-like rich results<\/strong>. Luckily Bill Slawski<\/strong> had written an article titled \u201cRanked Entities in Search Results at Google<\/a>\u201d  full of insights that helped us understand how things might actually work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to a patent granted in June 2020, we read on Bill\u2019s article, the flow – when Google receives a query like \u201cinternational schools singapore<\/em>\u201d – might be as follow: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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from the query to the carousel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Entities are extracted from documents that are relevant for the query and, most importantly, a category is also derived<\/strong> from those documents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first important information is that there is an interplay between pages ranking<\/strong> (the blue links) and entities in the carousel<\/strong> for that query. In our case both the school\u2019s website and the related Wikipedia article were ranking high but still the entity was missing from the carousel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google Knowledge Graph Reconciliation is a SEO Swiss Knife <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In context like the one I\u2019m describing here where an entity, originally categorized as \u201cinternational school\u201d ceased to exist, our role as SEO and data publishers is to facilitate the challenging tasks of keeping information consistent and up to date<\/strong> in large scale graphs like Google and Bing. The correctness of data is crucial<\/strong> for all the parties involved (from Google to the University) and is key to provide reliable information to consumers worldwide across different platforms (Google Search and Google Maps for this specific example). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is what we did to investigate the problem<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
1. Checking the entity in GKG<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

We started by checking if the entity was present in GKG<\/a> using the GKG Search API<\/a> (you can also use this Web App<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2. Getting the MREIDs for the entities involved <\/strong><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

As data gets extracted from multiple sources (unstructured text as well as schematized data) we might find multiple Machine-Readable Entity IDs<\/a> (MREIDs) that refer to the same thing. In this case we found MREIDs for the entities in the GKG kg:\/m\/05t00r6 (from the Freebase era) and kg:\/g\/11fy24_ymv (a newly created entity).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Analyzing MREIDs <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

By analyzing these MIDs we could find:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. An old Knowledge Graph that was matched with an old Google My Business Account <\/strong>that Google had associated with the entity (previously created from the Wikipedia article of the University) and that could no longer be displayed in the carousel since the address had changed<\/strong> (see \u201cMoved to a new location\u201d below). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here is how the SERP was<\/strong> when we tried to open kgmid=\/m\/05t00r6<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

2. A new Knowledge Graph presumably related to the new Google My Business entity<\/strong> that the school had created when changing the address of the main campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here is the information behind the new entity<\/strong> kgmid=\/g\/11fy24_ymv<\/a> (with a KP still to be claimed)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The problem and the solution<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

A University is a localBusiness and Google My Business is, for all local businesses, the Entry Point In Google\u2019s Knowledge Graph. The previously existing entity had been reconciled with a GMB that was no longer active and that Google could not use in the carousel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cFor local businesses, there\u2019s a separate process of claiming [entities] that operates through Google My Business.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n– Danny Sullivan Google Blog<\/a> <\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Entity linking and disambiguation <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

We immediately began by helping Google connect:<\/p>\n\n\n\n