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There was a lot of discussion back in spring 2017 when carousels were expanded in Google. But no definitive answers on how Google determines which sites rank for these results and what SEOs can do to get listed. My site (ansys.com) ranks for some of these results (example: "cfd software"), but the product listed in the result is not the primary product from our suite that should rank for these queries. Also the image Google displays is an outdated product logo pulled from a low-level blog post. This despite having structured data  on our site with correct logos. Also, we only rank for carousels in one of our product categories and not others, despite ranking on pg. 1 for those results. So rank doesn't seem to be a primary factor.

What is the secret sauce for ranking for these software carousels? And is it even worth it to try?

I was curious if you found any resolution to your question about the Software top carousel. I am an SEO for a global software company and have noticed our listings in some of these but not others. They are not showing in any tools I'm using to track search features/snippets. I assume that's because a click on the listing goes to another search (of that product name) rather than to a URL.

I've considered adding Software Schema to our pages thinking that might give us a boost. But reading your responses, it sounds like there is no correlation. Have you found anything new about how to optimize for these?

There was a lot of discussion back in spring 2017 when carousels were expanded in Google. But no definitive answers on how Google determines which sites rank for these results and what SEOs can do to get listed. My site (ansys.com) ranks for some of these results (example: "cfd software"), but the product listed in the result is not the primary product from our suite that should rank for these queries. Also the image Google displays is an outdated product logo pulled from a low-level blog post. This despite having structured data  on our site with correct logos. Also, we only rank for carousels in one of our product categories and not others, despite ranking on pg. 1 for those results. So rank doesn't seem to be a primary factor.

What is the secret sauce for ranking for these software carousels? And is it even worth it to try?