John Shehata shared a chart from his Newzdash service that showed how Google is showing more web stories in the top positions of the top stories carousel in the mobile search results. John said on Twitter “I am starting to see more and more web stories in Google Search Top Stories (News Box) carousels. The numbers are still small.”
Here is that chart showing more top placements in the top stories carousel for these web stories:
John shared a screenshot of this in action on Twitter:
I am starting to see more and more web stories in Google Search Top Stories (News Box) carousels. The numbers are still small. Have you noticed it? pic.twitter.com/a5lQi1m5wZ
— John Shehata (@JShehata) January 3, 2022
This obviously requires the publishers to create web stories, which has not seem to gain huge adoption yet. Some savvy SEOs love playing with it, Google has provided documents and videos on making web stories and Google keeps pushing it on its end.
So maybe more and more are creating web stories and that is why we see more in the top stories section?
Forum discussion at Twitter.