📘 This explains the Search Appearance search result and how you can use it in Botify reports.
Overview
Search Appearance is a type of search result, such as a featured snippet or an accelerated mobile page (AMP). You can help Google Search understand the content of a page by providing explicit clues about the page's meaning through the inclusion of structured data. Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content; for example, on a recipe page, you can use structured data to highlight important information such as:
Ingredients
Cooking time and temperature
Nutrition information
Structured data can also help Google display your site with compelling search appearance elements in search. Learn more about how your content can appear on Google.
Using Search Appearance in Botify
Search Appearance types are Google Search Console (GSC) metric types. For each type, you can get the following metrics: Impressions, Clicks, Average Position, CTR, and Missed Clicks.
Example in Keywords Explorer:
Example in a filter:
Search Appearance Types
Since the GSC API is not always up to date compared to the GSC user interface, every Search Appearance type may not be available in Botify.
Supported search appearance types include:
AMP non-rich results: A basic, non-graphical (plain, blue link) search result for an AMP page.
AMP article: A visually decorated search result link, such as an image from the AMP page, plus a content summary. The result can be free-standing on the results page or embedded in a carousel of similar result types. AMP article rich results are also counted as rich results.
AMP story: A visual storytelling format built on AMP enables users to tap through full-screen images and videos.
Android App: An Android app installation link or Android app page result in a mobile search. To get your Android app indexed and in search results, follow the Firebase Android App indexing guidelines.
Event listing: An event rich result that shows a summarized view of an event. Read about measuring clicks and impressions for Event items.
Event details: An event rich result that shows an expanded description of an event. Read about measuring clicks and impressions for Event items.
FAQ rich results: An FAQ page.
Google Play Instant: A mobile app designed to run in a trial form on a mobile device directly from Search results without needing to be installed on the phone first.
How-to rich results: A how-to rich result.
Job details: A job posting result showing an expanded job description. Read about measuring clicks and impressions for jobs.
Job listing: A job posting result showing a summarized view of a job. Read about measuring clicks and impressions for jobs.
Media Actions: Actions for music, television, and movie structured data, such as listen or watch.
Merchant listing: Items marked with Product schema are eligible to be shown in Google merchant listing experiences.
Product results: Items marked up with Product schema or identified as a product result by some other mechanism.
Product snippet: Web search results with visual enhancements, such as ratings and price. Items marked with Product schema are eligible to be shown as product snippets.
Q&A rich results: A Q&A page rich result.
Rich results: Any type of rich result defined in structured data listed in the search gallery. This includes all rich-result subtypes, such as job listing and AMP article rich results.
Review snippet: A review snippet rich result.
Search result link: Any link shown in search results.
Video: Videos that appear in general search results (type Web).
Web Light results: A lightweight, transcoded version of a webpage optimized for viewing over slow data connections.
Rules
Google mandates the applied rules since we retrieve information from the GSC API.
Impressions
Botify only displays Search Appearance types where you have impressions; for example, if you have no AMP results, you will not see AMP in Botify.
The same page can have multiple Search Appearance types in a single session, but only one impression is counted for each. For example, a page can have a rich result and a search result link for one query.
Filtered Click Counts
If you filter by Search Appearance type, it is not guaranteed that all clicks for a given URL were on a link in the Search Appearance type. This is because clicks are assigned to a URL, not a (URL + Search Appearance type). However, it is guaranteed that the user saw a link with this URL and Search Appearance type in the same set of results where she clicked a link with that URL.
For example, a user searches Google for "new cars", and the results show both a standard result link and an AMP link pointing to the same page on Bob's Car Dealership. A click on either link will count toward the same URL. The next day the owner of the website groups results by URL in Botify, filters by AMP Search Appearance, and sees that URL listed with one click, whether the user clicked the AMP link or the standard link.