As I’ve been working on my sites today, I’ve noticed something rather troubling, and a bit infuriating. It seems that Google is testing knowledge boxes for queries that end in “reviews.” And they are testing this out with an Amazon product page in that knowledge box. So far, it seems that this test is only happening in the Google US results. I do keyword research pretty much every day and today is the first time that I’ve noticed this, though it might have appeared before now.
I’ve looked for this with several different products in different niches and it seems to exist primarily in what would be the outdoors category on Amazon. So, basically products that are likely in their highest trending season of the year. To give you an idea of what I mean, let’s look at the always popular with IMers category of kayaks. As I write this, the #1 best seller on Amazon is the Intex Explorer K2 Kayak.
So, I go to Google and search for “Intex Explorer K2 Kayak review” and this is what I get… (looks normal, right?)
Now, when I add a “s” to the end of review, I get something completely different…
What’s troubling about this is, well, there are two things really. First, the Amazon link that Google is putting in the knowledge box just goes to the regular Amazon product page – not to the product reviews. So, it doesn’t even meet the query intent. Second, this makes me think that we are only going to see more of this in the future…
I’m sure you saw a lot of chatter about Google testing niche sites in the knowledge box a couple of weeks ago. I first noticed it on Jun 14th and shared it with my Insider25 group. That Google test centered around product keywords like “top rated kayaks” – and each instance of it that I found was for queries that began with “top rated” or “best” (like “best dslr camera”). It seemed to be mostly niche sites that got a spot in these knowledge boxes, unlike the ones I’ve seen today. What’s interesting is that some of the queries that produced these knowledge boxes two weeks ago are completely gone now, while others are still there, like the “best dslr camera” query.
I did manage to find just two instances of today’s knowledge box testing that featured niche sites. Like the one below…
While I like the possibility of getting one of my sites in the knowledge box like this, I can’t help but think that this is a bad move for Google since it also doesn’t meet query intent. If someone is searching for “reviews” then they likely want more than one.
Let’s just hope that this doesn’t become a permanent part of the Google results because it will be bad for niche site builders. And if you’re not in the US and see it in your SERPs, drop a comment with where you’re seeing it. (I already know it’s not showing up in Canada)
Hey, I’m Shawna. I make a living working from my laptop in places like London, Sydney, Dubai, Rome, Oslo, Bangkok, Las Vegas, Barcelona, and Amsterdam. I share how I do some of that on this website.