How do I rank inside the knowledge panel in the "people also search for" section?

[brettmandoes]

Hello fellow Mozzers,

In Google's knowledge panel there is a section at the bottom that says "people also search for" and a list of competitors is displayed. I'm hoping to get some information I can use to get my client listed there on top of the local organic results. The more SERP presence, the better. Attached image should provide clarity to those who are confused. I suspect I know the answer to this question, but since I can't find a source to verify my beliefs, I'm crowdsourcing. Thanks in advance!

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[julie-getonthemap]

What an interesting question. I hope someone has the answer.

It has always seemed to me that the businesses I've seen there have been prominent and I've suspected that they get a lot of branded searches.

[Ria_]

It seems that the businesses that appear are ones that frequently appear together in the SERPs. I can't imagine that there's much more to it than that. Similar businesses that people also search for by name and businesses that frequently appear together for the same/similar search queries.

I don't think it is necessarily tied to locality, as businesses can appear here that aren't in the local area of the business in the knowledge graph. But obviously if a business is very locally focused then the only businesses that appear there are locally focused too, due to people (for example) not searching for a local plumber and then proceeding to search for a plumber on the other side of the country. Or a local plumber appearing in the same set of SERPs as a plumber on the other side of the country, when they only rank for locally based keywords.

As far as I've seen, there's been no definitive studies on this so I'm just speculating above based on what I've read and seen myself.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Brett!

Good question. The People Also Search For results are algorithmic, and like Ria, I've not seen a definitive study on this area of the knowledge graph. What you could do if a client is desirous of making it into that area of the display would be to do competitive analysis of the top businesses currently coming up in this type of result and see if you can find commonalities. For example:

• What are the local and local-organic rankings for those businesses?

• What is their proximity to you when you search?

• What is their proximity to the main business in the knowledge graph?

• What do their review and link profiles look like?

That's just a start, but it would be how you would need to begin exploring the results of a particular knowledge panel. How much effort you put into this should be dictated by how valuable it would actually be for the client to appear in this feature.

[brettmandoes]

One of things I noticed when I clicked through some of the profiles was that it was pulling information from Google My Business, which makes me think that the information in there may be tied to it. I have a hard time believing that it truly is as simple as "people also search for (x) website" because I've seen Google posting businesses that are marked as permanently closed in this space, and I can't imagine people are repeatedly searching for a closed business in their area.

[brettmandoes]

Thanks Miriam, I don't think there's a ton of value to be had for this one particular client (not enough to make me conduct an extensive study on the matter), but even that is shooting from the hip.

Do you know of a heatmap study that shows how people interact with knowledge panels? If I can prove that X% of users interact with the competitor space on those panels then I may have a case to perform further research. Which if I did, I would share here, because I am a sharing kind of person

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Brett,

This might be of some help https://moz.com/blog/eye-tracking-2016-how-searchers-interact-mobile-serps-desktop but I haven't seen one that focused only on the knowledge panel. I'd love to see one.

[brettmandoes]

Thanks Miriam, you've been super helpful. For the time being I'll close this ticket but if I can get some solid data then I'll happily share the data with the Moz community in one format or another. Cheers!

[BlueCorona]

Hi Brett!

I've actually been wondering this same thing for awhile now. From what I've found, there isn't a way to specifically manipulate anything on your website with anything (i.e. schema, etc.) that will help get you in this position of the knowledge graph. At the moment, it seems like it is mostly pulling companies that are ranking prominently in the area. That being said, I would focus on getting your website to be one of the most authoritative in the area to improve your chances.