Naver has redesigned how its main document results look, and it’s a bigger change than it first appears. In a post on the official Naver Search blog on Thursday afternoon Korean time, the search team said that from 15 October, web, blog, Cafe, Knowledge iN (지식iN) and video results all use a single new layout.
On the same day, Naver also changed the Power Contents ad format, which we covered last week. That was the paid side. This is the organic side, and SEOs should look at it more closely.
What Naver says changed
According to the post, Naver has been running several A/B tests on the search-results layout since June. In early October it tested the web, blog, Cafe, Knowledge iN and video results specifically. Naver says users found the documents they wanted more easily in the test, so it rolled the new layout out to everyone. There are three main changes:
- One consistent result format. Every document type now shows its title, body text, image and source in the same arrangement. Naver says the aim is to let users see each item’s main content and source at a glance.
- “More related documents” and “Related channels” are gone. Naver says it has removed some extra elements, specifically “관련문서 더보기” (more related documents) and “연관채널” (related channels), so that individual pieces of content stand out more.
- Related-channel documents now have to rank on their own. This is the key line. Documents from other channels that used to appear inside the related-channels box “검색 순위에 따라 개별 검색결과로 노출” — they now appear as individual results, according to their search ranking.
Why the related-channels change matters
Related channels were a free extra slot. As Search Advisor describes it, when Naver linked a site to its own Naver Blog, YouTube, Instagram and other accounts, it could show those channels alongside the site’s result, though it never promised to. That box no longer exists. If your YouTube video or blog post was getting seen because it sat under your homepage result, it now has to earn a position in the normal ranking.
“More related documents” came in around 2022. Back then, Naver began grouping several similar pages from the same site into one result, with a “more” link to see the rest. Commentary at the time read it as a way to stop one site taking over the first page. The post doesn’t say whether same-source documents will now spread out as separate results or simply be shown less. I’d expect the second for most queries, but that’s my guess, not Naver’s statement. Watch your own query sets over the next couple of weeks.
There’s also a loose end in Search Advisor. Naver’s documentation still describes site related-channel markup, which uses schema.org Person or Organization with sameAs links to Naver Blog, Smart Store, YouTube, Instagram and others. The help docs said Naver might show those channels when it thought it would help users. Naver hasn’t said whether that markup still does anything visible now the related-channels box is gone. Keep it in place, because it’s still how you tell Naver which accounts are yours, but don’t expect the old SERP benefit.
Part of a longer clean-up
This fits what Naver has been doing all year. In June it simplified the tab bar, unifying PC and mobile tab UI and cutting less-used tabs such as short-form content, books, encyclopaedia and academic. Now the result cards themselves are being simplified. The direction is fewer extras around each document and more consistent cards, which suits a SERP increasingly topped by AI Briefing.
That last point matters. The study we covered yesterday found Naver Blog makes up 46.5% of AI Briefing citations. With consistent cards showing title, body, image and source, Naver Blog, Cafe and Knowledge iN results look much the same as web documents. Whether that helps outside websites or just makes Naver’s own UGC look neater is something the data will have to show.
What to do now
- Re-baseline Naver rankings and CTR from 15 October. Any change in a blog or Cafe result’s click-through from that date may be the new layout, not your content.
- If you had brand queries showing a related-channels cluster, check what appears now and whether your secondary channels still show up at all.
- Make sure every document has a strong image and a clear source name. Both are now part of the standard card for every result type.
For more on Naver, see our Naver SEO archive.