How to secure a placement within the Applications enhanced SERP feature

[KieranThomas]

Hi all,
I've recently noticed that one of the search terms for a client of ours returns an enhanced SERP feature which highlights related apps. The search term I used was "charity donation app" which returns the following feature:

Having looked at the top SERPs, there doesn't seem to be a common element between them. For example:

• Very few of the page 1 results (currently) use schema markup, and I think there was only 1 which used anything close to being relevant to this (e.g.@type: softwareApplication)
• Only 3 of the SERPs on page 1 are non-app articles. 1 has an .app domain, 1 is a listing for the app store, and 1 features app in the domain name (.com) but the rest are all articles about apps from sites who aren't necessarily the developer (e.g. "Best 10 apps....")
• Similarly, if I click on some of the ones which are listed, they too don't seem to include softwareApplication schema.

I ran a search for "fitness apps", "cooking apps" and that didn't return anything. I wondered if it's because the sheer volume of apps would be higher, but I ran a search for "flight tracking apps" (which I imagine would have a lot) and got a similar feature but with a scroll feature included:

I ran a search for "sat nav apps" and got the following which appears to use a different structure:

As a result, I wondered if anyone had any experience of optimising for this feature in particular? If so, could you please share some insights as to:

1) What the correct name for the feature is so I know how to refer to it (I searched for various terms such as applications enhanced feature, applications enhanced snippet, applications rich result, software rich result, but nothing seemed to return anything of relevance.
2) Does the alternative style (with images) have a different name?
3) How does Google determine what to display here given that it doesn't seem to be schema dependent? Does it pull data from the app stores?
4) How does it sort the results given they're not alphabetical? I'm assuming it's perhaps download & reviews related if it pulls it from app stores?
4) Ultimately, how do we secure a listing for our client amongst these (they already have an app on the Google play store but not in the Apple App Store)

Thanks! Really excited to be able to learn something new about this

 

[JS Girard]

You'll want to look into Knowledge Graph stuff, but I don't know the details.

 

[KieranThomas]

Thanks JS. Have had a search but haven't been able to find anything yet, but I'll share whatever I find back here.... unless anyone else knows the answer already?

@JoyHawkins Is this something you are familiar with?

 

[JS Girard]

For your case use, I think this article is a good starting point: How to get a Knowledge Panel for your brand, even without Wikipedia

 

[JoyHawkins]

@JoyHawkins Is this something you are familiar with?

No, this falls outside the scope of what we deal with as we don't have any clients with apps.

 

[KieranThomas]

Hi all. Just a quick update as I promised I'd feedback if I found anything which may be helpful.
Whilst researching schema for a different project today, I happened across this:

Software App (SoftwareApplication) Schema | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google Developers

Learn how to add software application schema to a web page so you can better display your app details in Google Search.

developers.google.com

In particular, it seems to be the "Application Category" which may determine what's shown when but having said that, I cant see any categories which directly map across, and I can't find a list of all applicationSubCategory values.

I need find some time to implement this and see what the results are, so I'll share any interesting info once that's been done