Google has launched new “buy e-books online” feature in the Google knowledge panel for books. These first showed up for book related searches on Friday morning.
Here is what it looks like:
The most interesting thing about these is that they seem to be organic results and NOT paid. They do not have a sponsored notation next to them.
The organic book buying options are all for ebooks and they show iBooks (Apple), Barnes & Noble, Google Play and Kobo. What is noticeably absent however, is Amazon.
Here is another one showing both ads and these new organic “Buy e-book” options.
This also appears when you search for books on desktop as well, in a slightly different format. Instead of showing icons, it shows tiny favicons with the company name in a list style.
The desktop version seems to be limited to three sellers – Barnes & Noble, Google Play and Kobo. I couldn’t find an example that also included iBooks, but perhaps it triggers for those doing desktop searches on a Mac.
They can also show up with shopping ads as well.
These appear to be active in both the US and Canada.
Google has added many features to their book related knowledge graphs over the past couple of years. They added expanded knowledge graphs, book carousels, and reviews in the form of featured snippets.
Jennifer Slegg
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