Key Moments in episode 112 of the Daily Brand SERP series:
00:00 Personal Brand SERP for William Shatner
00:08 The go-to person for a rich knowledge panel
00:39 How his Brand SERP looked like for the last 5 years
00:52 His Brand SERP the time he went to space
01:57 Practical tip: Google is sensitive to breaking news 😉
For the last five years, William Shatner has been my go-to Person when I am explaining Brand SERPs and Knowledge Panels. And for the last five years, the left rail has been remarkably stable with a Wikipedia page, Twitter boxes, People Also Ask, Video boxes and sometimes news boxes.
But his space flight with SpaceX changed that quite radically: the news boxes filled with breaking news and rose right to the top of the SERP, closely followed by the video boxes, with live streaming of the event!
This is because Google is super news-sensitive. If there is breaking news around an entity, Google adapts the Brand SERP quickly to keep the user informed with easy to access, up to date information.
Then after the event that sparked the breaking news stories and live videos, the Brand SERP reverts to its normal anatomy 😉 Until the next big story, of course!
Kalicube’s #DailyBrandSERP October 28th 2021 presented by the Brand SERP Guy, Jason Barnard.
Transcript:
Hi and welcome. I’m Jason Barnard. I’m the Brand SERP Guy and today, we’re looking at the Brand SERP for William Shatner. He has been for the last five years, my go-to person for demonstrating just how rich a knowledge panel can be. So if you look here on the right-hand side, we can see he’s been married multiple times.
He’s got children, he’s done movies and TV shows, as we know. He’s done music albums and we get a lot of people also search for. So he has a very rich knowledge panel and always has. So he’s been a great example because of his varied career and his success, of course. And looking this week, the knowledge panel and Brand SERP look very typical for how it’s looked the last five years or so with Wikipedia and the Twitter boxes and top stories with some people also ask on some videos, but I actually save his Brand SERP from last week when he went off into space. And as we can see here, the Brand SERP at least is very, very different. Right at the top, we’ve got top stories. It’s moved from lower down the new section that we see here, top stories. It’s moved up the SERP towards the top, along with these videos to watch him live.
Now the point here is that Google has adapted the Brand SERP to breaking news. On the day he went to space, it was really easy on Google to go straight to those top stories about him going to space and the videos to watch him live on that day. And then it reverted pretty much the next couple of days back to its normal state.
Where those news stories and videos are relegated to halfway down and two-thirds of the way down the page. And we get back to his Twitter boxes, his Wikipedia page and his TV and music career. So Google is very sensitive to breaking news and will adapt a Brand SERP accordingly when it feels that it is helpful and valuable to the audience searching that person or brand name.
Thank you very much for watching and I’ll see you soon.
