We have seen Google display answer boxes for some highly competitive search terms before, but now they are showing specific products with a commercial link to buy the product, but for when searchers aren’t searching for that specific product, but when searching for a general product query instead.
CognitiveSEO was the first to spot the new answer box.
Another interesting aspect to this is that the organic result for this answer box is actually very far down on the page, after two video links, images and 3 other organic results before the Amazon link is included.
It also displays the ratings for the product in question in the organic search results, with it having only 2.6/5 stars, which means it isn’t one that many people would recommend, but it is the one Google chose to display. And as Larry Kim points out, nothing marks it as being a commercial link, which it clearly is, despite it not being paid for by Amazon.
We are definitely seeing answer boxes popping up for the types of queries you wouldn’t think should be display one, such as “cheap home insurance” or “smallest car camera.” And it will be more and more important for SEOs to try and position themselves so that they can show up as the source in one of these answer boxes, rather than that honor going to a competitor.
And no, the Amazon link was not an affiliate link 😉
Jennifer Slegg
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