Have you ever noticed the “About this result” box will occasionally appear at the top of Google search results? This underutilized feature offers a goldmine of SEO insights, depending on if you know where to look.
The “About this result” box provides a snapshot of how Google views a specific webpage, including the site’s description, first indexed date, and external information from other sites. Tapping into these insights can unlock a competitive advantage for SEO analysis and strategy.
In this post, we’ll explore how to access this hidden gem and transform the valuable data it provides into actionable SEO opportunities. Specifically, we’ll cover how “About this result” can help you understand brand perception, inform content marketing, optimize link building, and improve on-page factors.
We also have some tips for getting the most out of this feature. Whether you’re looking to boost your organic traffic, outrank competitors, or simply improve your website’s standing in the eyes of Google, leveraging “About this Result” provides a quick yet highly effective starting point.
Hidden SEO Gem: The “About this Result” Feature
Accessing the About this Result feature is pretty easy. Just conduct a search on Google for any website or webpage. Scroll to the organic search result you want insights on and look for the “About this result” box right underneath the main site link.
The box contains three key sections:
Site Description – This shows the meta description Google has on file for that page. Reviewing this is essential to ensure your meta descriptions, which influence click-through rate, are aligned with Google’s understanding.
First Indexed Date – Knowing when Google first discovered and indexed a page provides context on your SEO and content strategies over time. Newer pages may need more optimization to compete.
Web results about this site – These are word-for-word snippets of what other authoritative sites and webpages say about the website. This shows external brand signals and topical relevancy that impacts Google’s trust and ranking algorithms.
Analyzing these three data points allows you to compare your own SEO priorities for a webpage versus how Google currently evaluates the page. You can use any differences that emerge to uncover SEO blindspots and fine-tune optimization efforts, from link building to on-page changes.
Monitoring insights provides an ongoing feedback loop to adapt SEO strategies over time as Google’s treatment of a site evolves. Tapping into the “About this Result” intel arms you with unique, real-time intel no other tool can match.
Unleashing SEO Insights
Understanding Your Brand Perception
The “About this Result” box can display some invaluable context into how Google views and presents your brand in search results. Carefully analyzing the site description shown allows you to identify any misalignment between Google’s current depiction and your intended brand image. You can then optimize pages and content to address these perception gaps.
Additionally, the external references highlight what authority sites or competitor content Google selects to validate your brand and offerings to users. If more favorable or relevant validation sources are available, it may require an outreach strategy to earn backlinks, guest posts or testimonials that help shape Google’s brand associations in your favor over time.
Lastly, comparing the featured site description to the likely search intent behind your priority keywords is key. Any mismatches here can negatively impact click-through rates to your site. You’ll want to enhance on-page content and page titles to better convey usefulness to the user journey.
Informing Content Strategy
The web resources Google spotlights provide a prioritized list of authoritative sites and competitors dominating content creation around your topics. By researching these authoritative domains more deeply using tools like Ahrefs, you can identify relevant staff writers and influencers to support your own content efforts through guest posts, outreach and community building.
At the same time, if Google is displaying snippets of other content instead of yours for industry terms you want to rank for, that reveals an opportunity to expand your site’s content depth in those areas to meet user demand. The end result is a better aligned, more comprehensive content strategy catered to ranking potential.
And on an individual content piece basis, aligning your document structure, subheadings and page focus to match the exact user intents associated with that search result helps maximize discoverability and long-term usefulness for visitors.
Optimizing Link Building Efforts
The external references Google displays are sites generally seen as reputable within their relative subject matter expertise. These become prime targets for your outreach efforts to build credibility-boosting backlinks over time, contributing to ranking improvements.
When competitors surface prominently in the featured snippet carousel, researching how they succeeded in earning links from reputable domains shown can uncover proven link building tactics to model. This can shortcut your own process of securing authoritative public references.
And assessing the mix of your own site content vs competitors or other sites provides a benchmark for how Google currently perceives your page’s link authority relative to rivals. If competitors are predominantly shown, that signals opportunity to improve trust metrics through links from reputable sites trusted by Google.
Getting the Most from “About this Result”
The “About this Result” box represents a free yet potent competitive analysis and SEO tool. However, mastering this feature to bolster your brand and content strategies requires going beyond a one-time lookup.
Ongoing monitoring is key. Set up Google alerts on your brand name and priority pages so you are proactively notified whenever the search engine updates the information shown. Changes often reflect Google’s evolving content associations and trust indicators that impact rankings. Quickly addressing newly surfaced competitor content or negative brand signals can prevent lasting ranking declines.
Archiving dated screenshots of your site’s search snippets on a monthly basis provides concrete benchmarks to gauge the impact of your SEO and content work over time. Is Google featuring more of your recent content now? Has the site description shifted closer to your brand image goals? Is Google showing fewer competitor backlinks? Tracking this tells a story.
You can also trace ranking movement milestones directly back to related snippet optimizations for validation. When a first-page ranking jump occurs shortly after finally securing an authoritative editorial link shown in the carousel, it confirms investing in brand mentions on reputable domains moves the needle.
And to fully leverage the external resources Google spotlights, use advanced site search operators. Filtering by backlinks uncovers entirely new link building targets sharing those same authoritative domains. Prioritize earning links, shares or mentions from these sites explicitly trusted by Google as well.
With the right tracking approach, “About this Result” provides rich, customizable intel to cost-effectively shape brand perception and ascend the SERP rankings over weeks and months ahead.
Unleashing SEO Insights: A Caveat or Two
While the “About this Result” feature can offer some great SEO intel, there are some limitations you need to know about before basing business decisions solely on this tool:
Questions Around Data Accuracy
First, the insights come from Google’s proprietary algorithms trying to select the most relevant and reputable sites to showcase. Despite seeming comprehensive, the information often provides an incomplete picture that requires additional verification through other analysis methods before taking action.
And with Google frequently updating its crawling, processing and ranking mechanics behind the scenes, occasionally data irregularities occur. What’s shown may not fully reflect recent changes made on your actual website and content or shifts around competitor backlink profiles and online brand sentiment. Fact check signals.
Risks of Misreading the Information
Basing decisions strictly on the limited snippet insights also poses interpretation issues. Confirmation bias can lead us to focus only on details that reinforce existing assumptions rather than considering alternative explanations. Just because an authoritative newspaper is shown referencing your CEO, is it actually endorsing your company or products if taken in full context?
It’s also vital not to mistake website descriptions for definitive declarations of current user intent. The snippets provide clues for investigation but do not replace direct visitor behavior analysis. Despite what Google shows as top related keywords, searchers may still be primarily seeking other information from your content in reality.
Losing Sight of Broader SEO Fundamentals
Further, an over-reliance on reverse engineering Google’s displayed snippet data carries over-optimization risks for your website and content development. Chasing the latest referencing domain additions pulls attention and resources away from continuously improving user experience and fulfilling visitor needs with your unique value and expertise.
Avoid viewing any single snippet factor as deterministic in isolation. SEO success depends on an intricate, evolving balance across technical competence, brand differentiation and informational relevance. The “About this Result” offers signals worth incorporating, not a finished blueprint.
While the feature’s revelations appear definitive, treat insights as clues requiring thoughtful interpretation within wider branding and customer context. Let the signals guide you, not dictate absolutes.
Leveraging This Hidden SEO Gem
As we’ve explored in detail, the underutilized “About this Result” box represents one of the most valuable SEO resources available today. Tap into it, and you gain an unmatched competitive analysis tool.
Specifically, this feature enables you to shape brand perception by optimizing content to improve Google’s displayed site descriptions over time. You can respond to the latest competitor content edits and negative publicity right away. And you can tailor pages and site architecture to match rising search queries and terms Google associates with your offerings.
The key is consistency in monitoring and adaptation guided by the insights uncovered. Set Google alerts, archive monthly screenshots and track how your organic rankings directionally respond to snippet optimizations for hard evidence on what works.
Experiment with analyzing the box across your main brand pages and content pieces around your core products and services. Tailor your analysis approach across keywords and search queries too for a multi-dimensional pulse on Google’s shifting perceptions.
As Google continues enhancing its algorithm and result snippets, this builtin feature will only grow more insightful. Now is the time to adopt it into your regular SEO and content processes. Within weeks and months, you can spot and benefit from opportunities that productized enterprise tools would take months and quarters to reveal.
So dive into your very own sandbox full of SEO possibilities – conveniently delivered within standard Google search results for free. Just don’t keep this inside edge to yourself!