SEO Software Updates

Insights at the Click of the Button - From the SERPs API

April 17, 2020
5 min
Insights at the Click of the Button - From the SERPs API

The SERPs are constantly changing and we have seen many updates earlier this year from Google regarding the featured snippets . This is why it is even more important to get real-time results. At Authoritas and Linkdex, we have been working to add the latest SERP features to our SERPs API platform, ensuring you can track all your visibility.

The API supports all major search engines in many of the large markets and languages globally (desktop or mobile rankings). It is also geo located to decimal lat/long and can be used for high volume queries across all the major search engines.

We all love keywords and want to see where the (long and short tail) terms are appearing in the SERPs. Use our SERPs API to power your own SEO dashboards with accurate keyword ranking data from any search engine using a real browser.    

Are you providing an integrated search strategy to your clients? No problem; our API does not just track organic listing but paid ads and Google Shopping as well. This means you can identify the keywords ranking for paid search but not yet organically. You can then at least own the paid search position whilst building up the ranking for your organic terms. We also show above the fold/visible analysis and you can have the API return just a JSON response and or include the captured HTML too.

We use a real browser and paginate like a real user. We ‘type’ our queries and execute Javascript so see real results including adverts.

– We do not use easy-to-spot SEO work arounds like URL parameters to get results

– We can support local SEO better than other providers as we can geo locate to a decimal latitude and longitude – go hyperlocal to the store front not just a postcode/zipcode level

All major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Yandex, Naver, Sogou, Seznam, Haosou360) in all major markets are supported.

Above the fold/Below the fold analysis

– Every significant Google universal SERP feature parsed and analysed

These are just some of the new API calls we have released since the beginning of the year:

Dictionary results: these are now supported and are parsed as a sub-category of Answer Boxes (labelled as ‘Direct Answers’ in the JSON response).

SERPs feature showing a dictionary definition
Google SERP dictionary definition

Single Maps: this now appears at the top of the SERPs. This is a one-off Map result. We supported Local Packs before but this Single Map is at the top of the results. It is only seen for specific local queries.  

Parsing of recipes: this is a relatively new SERPs feature as you can see below, therefore we did not support this before.

LBLs (Local Business Listings): we’ve added support for LBLs and are scraping other data from Knowledge Panel results (shows under ‘other_items’ in the JSON result). LBLs are a particular type of Knowledge Panel result which include details such as opening hours. We now distinguish between these and normal Knowledge Panel results. Most providers will not do this.


Google Knowledgepanel - Local Business Listing - Example showing Ikea
Google Knowledge Panel - Local Business Listing (example showing Ikea)

Currency Converter: for a business supplying foreign exchange services to consumers and businesses then it might be useful to know which keywords and questions generate this currency snippet.  If you are in this niche and not tracking this feature then you may not be recording your organic rankings correctly (you may incorrectly be recording your first organic rank as the top ranking result when in reality it appears below this snippet).  This is especially important if you have seen your rankings drop recently.

Google SERP Feature Share Stock Price
Google SERP Feature showing Share Stock Price

Knowledge Panel/Reviews: Parsing of this is now supported

Books (Knowledge Panel  sub-type), this is now also supported.

google-serp-feature-books
Google SERP Feature for Books

This is a list of the features we can pull with the Authoritas API:

  • Above the Fold analysis
  • Ads (PPC – Top & Bottom)
  • AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)
  • Answer Boxes
  • Books
  • Carousels
  • Currency Converter (since Feb)
  • Destinations (these results link to Google’s Travel Guides)
  • Dictionary definitions
  • Discover More Places
  • Event Finder
  • Featured video
  • Find Results By
  • Flight Finder
  • HTML capturing
  • Hotel Finder
  • Images
  • Job Finder
  • Knowledge Graph
  • Knowledge Panel/LBLs
  • Knowledge Panel/Reviews:
  • Location
  • Maps (single maps at the top of the SERPs – see above)
  • Number of results
  • Organic results
  • Organic FAQs
  • People Also Ask
  • People Also Search For
  • Places (Local Pack)
  • Podcasts
  • Positioning (X and Y coordinates of elements)
  • Recipes
  • Refine By
  • Related Searches
  • Research Guides
  • Reviews
  • Rich Snippets
  • See Results About
  • Shopping
  • Sitelinks
  • Spelling Corrections
  • Sports
  • Stock Prices
  • Super Universal
  • Top Stories (News)
  • Translations
  • Travel Finder
  • Tweets (Social Media)
  • Videos
  • Visibility (whether the result is actually visible to a user or hidden in a carousel off the side of the page)
  • Weather

Google is continually experimenting with new SERPs features and it therefore pays dividends to work with a partner with a feature-rich SERPs API that can keep up with those changes. At Authoritas we are constantly working to ensure our clients can retrieve these new features and plan to support all major universal search features at all times.  

Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@merakist

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AI Overvieew rank tracking software screenshot of the SERPs