Does Google’s Algorithm Populate Answer Boxes with Its Own Independent Research?

[Edward_Sturm]

If you search 'best games to play for youtube' you get an answer box with answers pulled independently from the article at hand. Here's an image:

http://imgur.com/a/S0j9B

Here are all the games from my article, in the order in which they appear. Google's chosen games for Answer Box are bolded:

• Battlefield 1
• Bloodborne
• GTA V
• FiFA 16
• TrackMania Turbo
• Garry’s Mod
• League of Legends
• Call of Duty: Black Ops III
• Tom Clancy’s The Division
• Overwatch
• Just Cause 3
• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
• Brawlhalla
• Rocket League
• Dark Souls III
• Unravel
• Firewatch
• GoldenEye 007 (this was put in as a joke, but coded as an H2 nonetheless)
• Destiny
• Dead by Daylight
• Fallout 4
• Undertale
• No Man’s Sky
• Minecraft

As you can see, Google is choosing which games to display to its searchers.

My Crazy Egg data shows that these were not picked by click volume (each of these H2s are hyperlinked), which means Google must be using some other popularity metric, such as its own search volume data or external sales data.

I wrote this up in a post on my site, for anybody who's curious.