How Many News Boxes have Multiple News Box Headers?
22. May 2023While most of the focus of a News Box is on the article headlines it contains, you may have wondered about the header that tops such news containers on Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs.) A News Box is a box on the SERPs, where only news publishers can rank and that is labeled as Top Stories or with other titles. Usually there are one or more headers in the News Box, that help identify the topic of the News Box. The number of headers can vary greatly and is the topic of this analysis.
Data
The basis for our analysis is the data from the News Boxes on mobile and Desktop SERP and examined how many rankings there were in total in the year 2022. Therefore we counted the News Boxes that have zero, one, two or three headers. If there were multiple News Boxes on one SERP, we counted them all individually. Then we took a deeper look at the News Boxes on the desktop and mobile SERP. Furthermore, we looked at how high the share of multiple News Box headers on the mobile and Desktop SERP was in 2022, when the peaks were and what you can take from this for your news SEO.
News Boxes with multiple headers
In this example, the keyword “Ukraine” got three headers within the News Boxes.
As SERP header we considered everything that can be above a thematic section as headline within a News Box. For each ranking in the News Box, we looked at what the section header is that applies to that ranking, and then counted how many different ones there are in each News Box.
For example, the News Box for the keyword “Ukraine” has three headers: “Russia-Ukraine war”, “News about Ukraine, US and Ron DeSantis” and “Also in the News.” But it is also possible, that there are no Headers or just one. So there is something like “Top stories,” “Also in the news,” but also “News about <any topic>.”
Findings from 2022
Starting with the News Boxes on the Desktop SERP. There were a total of over 40 million News Boxes, to be precise: There were 40,110,572 News Boxes. On average, all had at least one header but 0.01 percent didn’t even have one. The most common was one header (69.3 percent). Every fourth News Box had two headers and only 5.65 percent had three headers.
Progress of News Boxes on Desktop SERPs with no, one, two or three Headers in 2022.
Really exciting is that there are News Boxes with three headers from July until December. But from February to May, there were no News Boxes with three headers at all. In September, however, there were the most News Boxes with three headers (12.05 percent). The News Boxes without headers and News Boxes with one header were most common in January. There were 0.1 percent of News Boxes without headers and 71.16 percent with one header. Also, from April until July and in December there were just News Box with headers. In April, there were the most News Boxes with two headers. That was 32.41 percent.
Progress of News Boxes on mobile SERPs with no, one, two or three Headers in 2022.
On the mobile SERP, we found a total of over 42 million News Boxes, to be precise: There were 42,015,323 News Boxes for 2022. Again, most News Boxes (69.5 percent) had one header. Likewise, there were only 0.01 percent of the News Boxes with no header on the mobile SERP as well. However, the share of News Boxes with two headers was only 17.7 percent and with three headers even 12.8 percent.
Furthermore, the highest value for News Boxes without header on the mobile SERP was measured in January at 0.1 percent of all News Boxes. In addition, every News Box had at least one header on the mobile SERP from April to July. On the other hand, in October there were the most news boxes with one header (72.6 percent). Also the most News Boxes with two headers were in April. Here, 18.63 percent of the News Boxes had two headers. Three headers accounted for 15.35 percent of all News Boxes on the mobile SERP in February.
Conclusion
Looking at the data from 2022, our findings are:
☞ The trend seems to go towards more structure. This can improve the reading experience because you get a faster overview. Also it helps with the evaluation of the data because structures and current positions in the News Box are easier to recognize and you have more help about what is particularly important for a keyword from Google’s point of view.
☞ Most News Boxes have a header.
☞ But many News Boxes have two or three headers as well.
☞ It is also possible that a News Box has no header.
☞ It can be useful to optimize your text for the keywords in the header, but only if certain topics are mentioned in the header that are also suitable as keywords. e.g. the header “Russia-Ukraine war” is suitable for this.
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