The SEO and content marketing community has been in somewhat of a frenzy over Google’s recent announcement about including in-depth article snippets within the search engine results pages.

I admit, I’m jealous. I wish my content was good enough to be given in-depth article status. For now, I can only strive to do better, and see what the winners are doing.

A few weeks ago I analyzed a few dozen Google queries that displayed in-depth article snippets for the purpose of better understanding the why and how of it.

This week I set out to find 5 unlikely domains that were given in-depth article status, and to find out a little more about what makes them tick.

Also note that I am not by any means calling these domains non-authoritative or unworthy.  They simply occur much less in the in-depth article listings (IDALs) than sites such as the New York Times and other mega-brands that seem to own the listings.

The Subjects

[expand title=”Google Query: Airplanes”]

Domain: Babble.com

Title: Flying With Babies: People Can Be Douchey

In- depth query in title: no

Number of keyword occurrences in body: 2

Framework: WordPress

Backlinks to Article: 0

Moz Page Authority: 39

Domain Registered: 1994

Word Count: 827

Comments: 29

Social Shares: 8+1s

Schema: none

on-page SEO: good

Date: September 2011
[/expand]

[expand title=”Google Query: Telephone”]

Domain: WilsonQuarterly.com

Title: The Call of the Future

In-depth query in title: no

Number of keyword occurrences in body: 41

Framework: Drupal

Backlinks to Article: 8

Moz Page Authority: 52

Domain Registered: 2000

Word Count: 3,535

Comments: 14

Social Shares: NA

Schema: some

On-page SEO: bad

Date: April 2012
[/expand]

[expand title=”Google Query: Airplanes”]

URL: TheNation.com
Title: Fracking Our Food Supply

In-depth query in title: yes

Number of keyword occurrences in body: 25

Framework: Drupal

Backlinks to Article: 862

Moz Page Authority: 78

Domain Registered: 1995

Word Count: 4,610

Comments: 87

Social Shares: 16k likes, 3000 Tweets, 187 +1s

Schema: none

On-page SEO: some

Date: December 2012
[/expand]

[expand title=”Google Query: Computers”]

Title: The Stupidity of Computers

In-depth query in title: yes

Number of keyword occurrences in body: 75

Framework: HTML

Backlinks to Article: 231

Moz Page Authority: 64

Domain Registered: 2004

Word Count: 7363

Comments: none

Social Shares: 670 Tweets, 955 Likes, 296 +1s

Schema: none

On-page SEO: some

Date: July 2012
[/expand]

[expand title=”Google Query: Police”]

URL: WashingtonMonthly.com

Title: How We Train Our Cops to Fear Islam

In-depth query in title: NO

Number of keyword occurrences in body: 35

Framework: HTML

Backlinks to Article: 1,347

Moz Page Authority: 70

Domain Registered: 1998

Word Count: 6,643

Comments: NA

Social Shares: NA

Schema: None

On-page SEO: minimal

Date: April 2011
[/expand]

[expand title=”Bonus Google Query: Crime”]

URL: MotherJones.com

Title: America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead

In-depth query in title: Kind of

Number of keyword occurrences in body: 65

Framework: Drupal

Backlinks to Article:

Moz Page Authority: 84

Domain Registered: 1995

Word Count: 4,962

Comments: 792

Social Shares: 7000 Tweets, 72,000 Likes

Schema: None

On-page SEO: minimal

Date: January 2013
[/expand]

What Can We Learn From This?

Not too much more than we already know.  In-depth article status is given to brands that have a ton of authority, very lengthy content, and tons of trust.

Something new that I did notice is it does seem that most of the IDALs are at least 1 year old.  Very rarely have I found an in-depth article from the year 2013 but there are exceptions.

We are still yet to see a domain that does not already have an in-depth article listing obtain one through schema (or content length, etc) manipulation, but I am sure someone will make it happen soon.