Barry AdamsSEO and Audience Growth Consultant for News Publishers

Top Stories SERP Features - YoastCon 2023

2 Apr 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:43

Top Stories boxes and recipe carousels dominate clicks on Google, often burying organic results below the fold. To decide if a keyword is worth targeting, manually search it and check what SERP features appear, rather than trusting tools alone.

Chapters

Scroll down further on that search result, you get a top stories box as well, which is where I play. That's where my news clients want to rank. And that of course has a very big impact on click-through rate as well. You know, if you rank organically below a top stories box, you might as well not fucking rank because you're never getting that click. You need to know which SERP features are active to make the right decision. Are we going to be able to chase after that keyword or not? Is it the recipe carousels we want to be in? Is it the top stories box you want to be in? Is it the video carousel? You need to know those things before you go chasing after a keyword, which means you probably just need to type in the search term. I know, shocking, right? And actually see what Google is showing rather than look at it through the lens of a tool.