Google seems to have removed all instances of in-depth articles from the search results. Dr. Pete Meyers confirmed the removal, and Mozcast shows a drop to 0% coverage.
I did look at many of the keywords I track that included in-depth results, and none of the search results contained those results.
Here is the Mozcast data.
It also seems that Google isn’t just formatting them closer to the rest of the results, those in-depth results are no longer displaying a all, since they did get a seeming ranking boost to appear on the first page.
While for some, many view it as an opportunity to get more space on that coveted first page with organic results. But if you are a site that tends to get many in-depth article results, it seems likely Google search referrals will drop significantly.
It did seem that Google was cutting back more and more on the in-depth articles. They lost their section header, they lost thumbnails and then the extra lines normally associated with in-depth article results.
Of course, we have seen Google temporarily remove a feature only to bring it back, so this could happen here too. Or perhaps not enough people were clicking on those in-depth answers to warrant giving them the real estate to do it.
Jennifer Slegg
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Geoff Hill says
Hi I’ve just used Google to do an indepth search on Mobile with everything deleted after the initial search word – its completely useless now
What can I do ?
Geoff