Google Launches Knowledge Graph Carousel

Google continually works on improving the quality of the search results and the presentation of the search results to help users better. Google always aims at improving the quality of the surfing experience by ensuring that the internet users get what they need in the fastest way. Along these lines, Google has announced a very interesting feature to its local searches. Google’s new feature is called the Carousel and it is part of its knowledge graph. This is an interactive feature, Google reported, “Starting today, when you search Google for restaurants, bars or other local places on your desktop, you’ll see an interactive “carousel” of local results at the top of the page.”

The Carousel results will be as displayed on top of the regular search results. This feature is applicable for all local searches and the Carousel results will be centered on top of the search results. You can search for car wash, hotels, theatres along with or without the localization term. Google will pull out all the local searches in the form of an image carousel to make it easy for you to review the listings. Depending on the number of the local results, you will be able to scroll through the images in the carousel using the right arrow like you will normally do to move to the subsequent images. The carousel features also a map, which you can zoom in to find more results pertaining to a specific area. If you should be interested in any of the listings you can click on that particular entry to get more information on that location. The best part is that Google also features scores for each entry based on user reviews. The listing also features readily the address of the location and any photos that are relevant to the entry.

The carousel feature also indicates the price ranges wherever applicable, which Google hopes will help the users in making quick but well informed decisions. Currently, this feature is available only in English and for the US users. Google however promises to support more languages. Google also expects to add more features.

This new feature is expected to drive more traffic to local businesses. Local businesses can now rejoice because they get special advantage in the search results and an additional space to grab. If you are targeting local customers then it is high time that you optimized your pages for local searches so that you increase your chances of getting listed in the carousel results. Your business can certainly do with this additional visibility; here is your chance to take the online competition head on. Google will certainly be using various online signals to pull out the local results for the carousel listings. One of the signals could be the social media likes and social media reviews. Try to boost your online visibility in the social media sites too so that you will double your chances. If you have your websites in other languages do not worry, soon Google will start supporting all the popular languages.

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