Google Mobile Search Snippets Showing Keywords Mentioned

By Brodie Clark

[Updated: 10:27am AEST, May 30th 2021]
  • Home
  • >
  • Blog
  • >
  • Google Mobile Search Snippets Showing Keywords Mentioned
Share
Tweet
Share
Share
Tweet
Share
words frequently mentioned on the page test mobile

In my latest Google Search test finding, I’m seeing mobile snippets with labels located below the title. Each label contains either a single or multiple words that are mentioned within the content of a page.

For the most part, the keyword labels only appear in instances where they are a relevant reference point. This means they may not appear for pages where the topic is straight-forward and the title and description combination provides enough context.

The same could be said about the connection with entities. If a page makes many mentions of conjunctions like “for” and “so”, then those wouldn’t be given consideration. Like all search snippets, the query determines the results generated and entities help build relevance.

Looking at how a standard web search listing appears on mobile vs. the label keywords test, we can see how the labels add additional context. While the title, description and image remain the same, the words “streaming”, “drama” and “comedy” give categorisation prompts.

Comparing a standard mobile web search listing with the test showing keywords below the title

To ensure that the labels were generated purely on words mentioned in the content of the page, and not some other input, I checked several examples. Each of the examples made it pretty clear that this is where the label had come from, with many instances shown.

As an example of this, you can see that for Zappos, they have the keywords “soft footbed” and “eva” showing as the labels on mobile. If I click through to the category page (note: the keywords aren’t clickable) and do a search for the words mentioned, there is 48 instances on the page.

When the labels appear on a mobile search result, this means there is several mentions in the page content

Based on what I could find, this test hasn’t shown on Google’s mobile search results in the past. Barry Schwartz did write about something similar showing on mobile in March of 2017, but this had a “tags” label. Hard to say if this is the same feature from the example shown in Barry’s post.

From an SEO perspective, if this test does launch on mobile and accompanies the default snippet, it shouldn’t change how your content is written. Continue writing naturally and doing research to include words that your customers are searching for.

Update February 22nd:

Looks like others are starting to see this test. Here’s an example from Elliott Mellichamp on Twitter, with the same site showing several keyword labels on mobile:

And the same goes for Brian Freiesleben, who is seeing similar for several sites. Note the second example which shows 4 words as the label with “sweet potatoes or yams”. Very interesting example.

Update May 30th:

Several months later, it looks like this test has returned. Ethan Lazuk posted about it on Twitter yesterday and Brian Freiesleben (who also saw it earlier this year) let me know. Interesting seeing this test come back. Anecdotally, I’m seeing more examples of this test that feel more entity-focused rather than keywords in the content.