Google rolled out a brand new feature called In-depth Articles to it’s search feature. What does this feature do? It is not a filter-like feature that you can apply to searches while Googling things. It’s something different. See it’s official announcement here.

In-depth articles feature is Google’s “one more step” towards high quality content. The In-depth articles in searches will now be highlighted as shown in the below screenshot:

How to use Google In-Depth Articles

See In-depth articles in action

With this new added quality measure from Google, users will now see the in-depth content highlighted in the search pages.

How can webmasters optimize content for Google In-depth Articles?

Can I optimize my content for Google In-depth articles? Is it really needed? If you think your content is “in-depth” and it should be highlighted as an “in-depth article”, here are 5 simple steps to optimize it for that:

  1. Use schema.org “article” markup in your article pages.
  2. Always provide authorship markup in your articles.
  3. If you paginate your articles, use rel="next" and rel="prev".
  4. Always provide separate and unique Canonical URL for each and every page including the paginated ones.
  5. Provide information about your website or organization by implementing Organization Markup.
  6. And last, but very important one: create original, useful, compelling, engaging, and in-depth content.

That’s it. You’ve done your job, now leave it on Google to mark and highlight your content as in-depth on searches. All the best!

Note for Restricted content access

If you restrict the public access to your content, for example, you ask the readers for subscription to access the articles, you should implement Google’s First click free to allow search crawlers to see your content for a better eligibility for In-depth articles.

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