SERP Sonar Product Roadmap Highlights For 2022
Hello Sonar Stars! As I’ve discussed SERP Sonar with some of our advisers and early adopters, I’ve gotten lots of feedback and ideas for new features. Building the best free SERP analysis tool takes a team!
Even as we focus on a formal version 1 launch for the product, we continue planning our feature list and development schedule further out. And we have a lot on the product roadmap that we hope to deliver over the next six months!
SERP Sonar Product Roadmap Highlights For 2022
The main deliverables still in development for (or shortly after) the first official release is focused on three areas. These are 1) identifying searcher intent, 2) measuring SERP congestion and position visibility and 3) assessing brand or topic dominance in the SERP.
Some ideas for new data and analysis features are still being researched, and others are top secret! But here are a few of the new features we can share now.
Sonar Depth Selector
By default SERP Sonar scans the first ~100 results for the search term, and delivers back data and analysis for all accessible pages (in addition to the various SERP features that Google presents).
The “Sonar Depth” selector will be in the main app bar, and allow the user to control the results range of pages analyzed. Options will be for 10, 20, 50, or All results, and control the total and averages calculated and other derived stats, in the app bar and report. The selection will also be set as default until changed by the user.
Given the early success and rapid adoption of schema markup it is only likely to continue growing in use and usefulness.
Schema Markup Collection
Schema markup is microdata that can be included in the HTML of site pages which helps search engines better understand the content. It allows publishers to clearly identify elements within the content, and even aspects of the post and publisher itself.
The standard was a collaboration between Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Yandex, and can be explored at Schema.org. Given the early success and rapid adoption of schema markup it is only likely to continue growing in use and usefulness.
In addition to the other data and attributes that SERP Sonar collects from the ranking pages for a keyword, it will also inventory the schema (tags and values) being used. This can inform schema use in pages that want to compete. Commonalities with the entity data discussed below might also provide useful insights.
Knowing what entities Google associates with a keyword gives valuable insight into what the search engine expects…
Entity Extraction
Google continually seeks to understand the searcher and improve search results, in order to deliver the most relevant results. To that end, it has sought and been granted numerous patents that aim to better identify or anticipate entities from a search query (and from publisher content).
With the ability to distinguish words in search queries as certain entities and topics it can then map these together; better structured data allows for better pattern recognition and machine learning.
In most cases, entity name and ID data is accessible in the search engine results page. SERP Sonar will extract and include this entity data in the report. Knowing what entities Google associates with a keyword gives valuable insight into what the search engine expects in terms of semantically related words and concepts for inclusion in publisher content.
A key feature of the report is to have conditional alerts and rules-based recommendations.
Rules-Based Report Recommendations
The data and analysis report (which, in time, will likely be split into multiple reports) is a centerpiece of SERP Sonar. It is where all the various data gathered from both the SERP itself and the ranking page results is organized and presented. There are many ways we hope to expand and improve on this.
A key feature of the report is to have conditional alerts and rules-based recommendations. Based on the presence or combined occurrence of certain elements or data levels, report fields can be highlighted and have brief comments, warnings or suggestions.
The idea is to surface ideas and insights that might be missed by just visually scanning the SERP.
There is additional, valuable page data and content that can also be extracted and included in these files…
Data Export Enhancements
SERP Sonar already provides a simple CSV file export feature that provides much of the data already extracted from the first ~100 pages for the search term. There are still many data attributes not included there. There is additional, valuable page data and content that can also be extracted and included in these files, even if it is not directly used for SERP Sonar analysis and reports.
We will continue to add data and content to the export file feature, which we hope helps users with their own independent analysis and digital marketing studies.
These are just a few of the bigger features and data types we plan to deliver. But SERP Sonar will only improve if the tool continues to grow with the needs of its users.
Is there hard-to-get data type you’ve always wished you had? Do you have an interesting idea for SERP or ranking page analysis but didn’t have the tool to do it? We’d love to get your input! Send your feedback! Thanks!
We are plugging away at getting v1 out the door but we can’t wait to start working on more features. What do you need that we can help with?