You used to win in search by ranking #1. Now you win by showing up everywhere.
I was preparing for a recent webinar on “Future-Proofing Your Search Strategy,” where we would discuss the need to be multimodal. When I ran two simple searches. The first was for a product I needed, “new trail running shoes,” and another was a random e-commerce query for a “pre-owned Rolex Submariner in Boston.” What I saw on the screen looked less like a traditional search engine and more like a casino gaming floor.
- Shopping carousels are stacked on top and bottom
- Four rows of “Popular Products,” most with the exact same image but different prices
- A decision matrix on the left rail with multiple refinement attributes like gender, brands, colors, and prices
- YouTube reviews and Shorts in horizontal rows
- Local business listings and map packs pulling you to “near me” options
- One lonely organic listing midway down the page
- A few blocks later, more product tiles… and more ads
Every block competed for attention. Every format whispered, “Click me.” It was deals on deals, distractions within distractions—engineered not just for discovery, but for extraction. Scanning the SERPs, I noticed no single store had more than two placements on the entire digital shelf.
This isn’t a digital shelf—it’s a gamified interface where visibility is fragmented, paid, and fleeting.
In this environment, merchants need a new strategy: Not just to be seen, but to be seen multiple times, across multiple formats.
It’s no longer enough to win one spot. You need to flood the zone, like a casino, placing the same slot machine near every entrance.
This is another example of how what is old is new, and why brands must focus on being multimodal and adopt a SERP ShelfSpace maximization strategy. More than twenty-five years ago, I coined the phrase “SERP Shelfspace” (“Search Engine Results Page ShelfSpace”) during a pitch to a consumer packaged goods company, trying to explain why we needed to focus at a category level and implement a multi-brand strategic approach, rather than just optimizing individual brand projects.
I told them the following:
“Think of the SERP like shelf space at the supermarket. Every position you occupy is one less for your competitors.”
What is “SERP Shelfspace”?
SERP Shelfspace refers to the amount and quality of presence a brand or website can secure on a search engine results page (SERP).
The analogy is drawn from physical retail, where products fight for the best placement on store shelves. CPG companies will pay a premium for eye-level spots and end caps, and offer multiple products in a category to maximize shelf space. Online, prime “shelfspace” refers to the highest and most visible positions on the search results page, which are most likely to earn awareness, clicks, and engagement.
Visibility: Just like in brick-and-mortar stores, being higher up and occupying more space on a SERP means more people will notice and potentially choose your brand over a competitor’s.
Competition: The more positions your content occupies, the less space there is for competitors, mirroring the zero-sum game of retail shelf real estate.
Strategy: SEO professionals need to focus on strategies for increasing their “SERP shelfspace” through organic rankings, paid ads, and other SERP features like
featured snippets, local packs, shopping feeds, videos, images, and reviews.
Search as Shelf Talk: How to Be the Brand That Google Recommends
In the pre-AI era, your SEO strategy might have centered around 10 blue links, rich snippets, and featured snippets. But that’s not how discovery happens anymore. In retail, shelf space is currency. Brands fight for it. They pay for end caps. They negotiate signage. They ensure their message is visible in every aisle where a customer might browse. The SERP now functions similarly, particularly in product and commerce-related queries.
| Real-World Analog | SERP Element | Metaphorical Function |
|---|---|---|
| End caps | Paid Text and Shopping Ads | Premium placement to drive impulse conversion |
| Floor displays | Local Pack / Map Listings | High-traffic positioning near decision moments |
| Shelf tags | Organic Listings | Standard visibility—often buried without enhancements |
| Feature signage | Google Buyer’s Guides / Left-Rail Decision Tools | Interactive content that builds an emotional connection |
| Staff recommendations / House picks | Featured Snippets | “House-endorsed” answers—fast, authoritative, trust-laden |
| Live demo stations | YouTube Videos, Shorts, Reviews | Interactive content that builds emotional connection |
| Casino slot machines | AI Overviews / In-line Answers | Designed to keep users engaged and spinning through content loops |
| Private-label products | Google-owned modules (SGE citations, Merchant Center tiles) | Controlled inventory used to retain users and data |
In this environment, you’re not fighting for one ranking—you’re fighting for presence across multiple zones of the shelf. Just like Trader Joe’s uses handwritten shelf talkers and Total Wine adds staff scores to steer choices, Google and other platforms now curate their own AI-powered endorsement layers. And if you’re not structured to be reused or cited by those systems, you’re left behind.
This article explores the new visibility landscape and how to establish a brand that gets recommended, not just one that appears.
The New Metric: Share of Shelf
Forget traditional share-of-voice. What matters now is the share of shelf—your brand’s total representation across every SERP module and content format that appears in a commercial-intent query.
Ask yourself:
- Are we in the shopping block?
- Do we appear in local/map listings?
- Do our videos show up in video rows?
- Are we cited in buying guides or AI summaries?
- Do our product pages rank organically at all?
If the answer is “no” to most of those, you’re losing ground—because each shelf your competitor owns is one less opportunity for you.
How to Measure Your Share of Shelf
Traditional SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, STAT, and SEOClarity can help you approximate your Share of Shelf by tracking:
- The total number of SERP features where your brand appears (vs. competitors)
- The formats you’re included in (ads, local pack, videos, featured snippets, etc.)
- The positioning and frequency of your brand across commercial queries
- Shifts in SERP real estate over time across devices and geographies
Some platforms even allow visual SERP monitoring so you can literally see your brand’s shelf presence shrinking or expanding month over month.
Pro tip: Start tagging queries by intent and SERP type (e.g., “transactional with video block”) and monitor your format-level visibility, not just rank position.
How to Win the Shelf War
Here’s your modern merchandising checklist:
1. Build for Format Diversity
- Product feeds (Google Merchant Center, structured JSON-LD)
- Short-form videos (TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels)
- Visual assets (multiple image types, alt text, named files)
- FAQ and buying guide content (for inclusion in decision matrices)
2. Connect Your Ecosystem
- Use a schema to bind formats together
- Maintain consistent entity data (brand, product, location)
- Reinforce with internal links and canonical tags
3. Audit the SERP, Not Just Your Site
- Search your top commercial-intent terms and count your appearances
- Screenshot results monthly to track shelf space movement
- Identify underrepresented formats and close the gaps
4. Make It Easy to Reuse Your Content
- Structure answers in bullets, tables, and steps
- Feed content into platforms via API, where possible
- Design every asset to be machine-readable and user-helpful
Part of a Bigger Shift: The “What’s Old Is New” Series
In Part 1: Beyond the Hype, I broke down the deeper forces driving the shift in search, from user intent and frictionless delivery to platform monetization and data harvesting.
In Part 2: Why SEO’s Fundamentals Still Matter in the Age of AI, I showed how the classic pillars of SEO—indexability, relevance, authority, and engagement—haven’t disappeared. They’ve simply evolved to meet new systems and expectations.
This article builds on both by exploring the modern visibility battlefield:
Not whether your content shows up, but where, how often, and in what format.
Because in today’s AI-curated, multimodal search landscape, shelf space is no longer just real estate—it’s a recommendation system. And the brands that dominate across formats are the ones that win the decision.
Don’t Just Be on the Shelf—Own It To Be the One Recommended
In a multimodal world, showing up once isn’t enough. You need to be present in every aisle, every format, every decision path.
That means shifting from a ranking mindset to a merchandising mindset:
- Structure content like products
- Design formats for every shelf
- Make your value obvious—to users and to machines
Because visibility today isn’t just about shelf presence. It’s about being the brand the algorithm recommends—the structured, trusted, and helpful source that earns the digital shelf talker.
Just like in retail, brands that dominate the display and win the endorsement win the sale.
