What You Need To Know About Google’s New Search Live Carousel

Earlier this week Google rolled out the pilot of its long-awaited, Search Live Coverage Carousel.

What is it?

A ‘real time’ indexing API, the carousel is designed to further expedite the display of breaking news stories in its SERPs from trusted

publications – denoted by a “Happening now” headline. The pilot will display content from a range of mediums, including blog posts, full-length articles, and videos.

What’s the catch?

The catch for interested publications is that it appears Google is taking no prisoners when they use the term “trusted publication.” To be considered for this pilot, Google has instructed publications to submit an opt-in form assuming that it already meets the following SEO criteria:

• Pages are published using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
• AMP pages include structured data for the content itself
• Content is published to Google using an Aton XML Feed

What does the Search Live Coverage Carousel Mean for, well, everyone?

Google’s Search Live Coverage Carousel is a game changer for news publications, Internet users, and SEO professionals alike.

For news publications, this is an opportunity (and increased pressure) to share content with the public faster than ever before. For Internet users, this is a quality upgrade to featured articles on the world’s most popular search engine. For SEO professionals, this means that the standard of what makes an “SEO friendly website” has been raised once again, making AMP pages and structured data usage less of a want and more of a need.