Thursday, February 15, 2024
Following our latest update on our preparations for the Digital Markets Act (DMA), we’re sharing more details about what publishers can expect to see in regards to new search results in European Economic Area (EEA) countries, and how they can express interest in these experiences.
With these new experiences, users in EEA countries searching for queries such as “hotels near me” may notice more visual and entity focused results. These experiences aim to:
- Present users with rich and relevant information for their searches
- Improve the visibility of ecosystem participants (aggregators, suppliers, and businesses) on the search results page
New carousel rich result for aggregators and suppliers
A rich result typically relies on structured data in the markup of a web page to display graphical elements or interactive experiences. Today we’re sharing more about a new carousel rich result for travel, local, and shopping queries. Each tile in these new carousels may have information about the price, rating, and images for entities on the page. Users can scroll horizontally to see more entities from a given site. If a web page doesn’t have structured data markup on the page, then the standard text result is shown.
This new carousel rich result is available for travel, local, and shopping queries. For shopping queries, carousel rich results are being tested first in Germany, France, Czechia, and the UK.
New aggregator units and refinement chips
We are also introducing dedicated aggregator units that include links to aggregator sites from across the web. Aggregator units allow users to easily see the top aggregator results for their respective query. Users can also click More sites to see additional relevant aggregator sites for their query. There are several types of units available:
- Places sites
- Jobs sites
- Flight sites
- Product sites (being tested first in Germany, France, Czechia, and the UK)
Refinement chips such as “Places sites” can help users focus the Search page on aggregator text results. Searchers can activate the refinement chips at the top of the Search results page or by clicking More sites on the new aggregator units. Publishers don’t need to add any markup in order to be eligible for aggregator units or refinement chips.
In addition to the carousel rich results, aggregator units, and refinement chips, we’re introducing a new experience for flights queries, which includes a new unit for airline websites. You can learn more about the experience for flights queries.
Learn more and express interest
These new experiences are currently launched to users in EEA only. If your business is based in EEA, or serves users in EEA, and you would like to learn more and express interest in these new experiences, you can start by filling out the applicable form (for flights queries, use the interest form for flights queries).