It seems that Google's Interesting Finds feature has been removed from the mobile search results. I'm not sure when it was removed exactly, but the removal could have happened a while ago. I realized this while analyzing the SERPs for several clients that once had a number of listings ranking in the Interesting Finds feature. After noticing the removal of the module, it hit me that I haven't seen Interesting Finds in some time...
To refresh your memory, Interesting Finds was a powerful mobile SERP feature that provided a three-pack of listings. You could also click to reveal up to twenty additional listings from the default Interesting Finds module. It could even sometimes rank number one in the mobile search results and could enable sites to double dip in the SERPs by yielding the same listing multiple times for a query (once in the module and once outside the module). I covered Interesting Finds heavily in my Search Engine Land post about the feature.
This is important to understand since it could be impacting traffic from Google for sites that used to rank well in Interesting Finds. Again, sites could double dip when a url ranked in the Interesting Finds module (ranking in the module and outside the module in the top 10). Just a heads-up to check your reporting for queries that yielded Interesting Finds to see the impact.
What Took Its Place? While analyzing the SERPs for the queries that previously yielded Interesting Finds, I'm seeing several other SERP features instead. For example, Visual Stories (Web Stories), Short Videos, Google's new grid layout (which combines linking to Google images and third-party sites), organic product listings, "Found on the web", etc.
Here are some examples of what Interesting Finds looked like in the past and then some of the features I see now:
Before:
After Interesting Finds was removed:
Before:
After Interesting Finds was removed:
Before:
After Interesting Finds was removed:
I will ping Google to see if they can provide more information about why the feature isn't showing up in the mobile SERPs anymore. I'll update this post with any information I receive.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
This is a rare contributed article by Glenn Gabe, an SEO Consultant at G-Squared Interactive focused on major Google algorithm updates and other disturbances in the SEO force.
