A Product Knowledge Panel is a variation of Google's Knowledge Panel which, as its name suggests, was designed specifically for products. Unlike the Brand and Local Knowledge Panels it cannot be claimed by a business.
Such a panel is used to organize and show product information that Google aggregates from various sources on the Web (retailer sites, manufacturers, and structured data on web pages related to the query).
The primary goal of a Product Knowledge Panel is to enhance the customer experience by providing a wealth of information about the product, which can help the customer make informed purchasing decisions.
In addition to helping customers, Product Knowledge Panels also benefit retailers as they
can increase conversion rates, and reduce the number of customer service inquiries since they feature essential product information a buyer may need before making a purchase decision.
In desktop searches, the panel of products typically appears on the right side of the SERP, and towards the top of the results on mobile.
Since the Product Knowledge Panel is one of Google’s most interactive search results, its layout varies depending on the featured product and it can include information such as product specifications, user reviews, pricing information, and links to online stores where the product can be purchased. It may also contain images or videos, as well as related products and accessories.
In AWR, the ranking positions of the online stores featured in the Product Knowledge Panels are being reported with the Universal version of Google: Google Desktop Universal for desktop searches, respectively Google Mobile Universal for mobile search results. Such search engines can be added for monitoring from the Project settings > Search engines section.
💡 When tracking the Universal version of a search engine, the positions of Organic entries alongside the URLs from Local 3-pack, Featured Snippets, People Also Ask, Images, Videos, Knowledge Panels, and other types of results will be reported as ranked if found in SERP. More information about Google's search preferences available in AWR can be found in this article here.
After adding a Universal search engine and at least one ranking update is completed, you can easily identify the keywords which have triggered a Product Knowledge Panel with the help of the SERP Features filter:
In the filtered results, the SERP Features column shows which features are present on the search results pages retrieved from Google for each keyword.
If the selected website (main or competitor's URL) ranks for a particular SERP Feature, the associated feature symbol is highlighted in green. If the selected website does not rank for any of the features present in SERP, all the symbols will remain blue.
Since they are part of the same search result element, the online stores featured in a Product Knowledge Panel will be reported with the same ranking position.
Do you have any other questions? Don’t hesitate to get in touch and we will keep building the FAQ.