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Petits fours in your search results

Wednesday, November 17, 2010 at 5:00 PM

Webmaster Level: All

Recently we made a change to show more results from a domain for certain types of queries -- this helped searchers get to their desired result even faster. Today we’re expanding the feature so that, when appropriate, more queries show additional results from a domain. As a webmaster, you’ll appreciate the fact that these results may bring targeted visitors directly to the pages they’re interested in.

Here’s an example: in the past, the query [moma] (the Museum of Modern Art), might have triggered two results from the official site:


With this iteration, our search results may show:
  • Up to four web results from each domain (i.e., several domains may have multiple results)
  • Single-line snippets for the additional results, to keep them compact
As before, we still provide links to results from a variety of domains to ensure people find a diverse set of sources relevant to their searches. However, when our algorithms predict pages from a particular site are likely to be most relevant, it makes sense to provide additional direct links in our search results.


Like all the hundreds of changes we make a year, we’re trying to help users quickly reach their desired result. Even though we’re constantly improving our algorithms, our general advice still holds true: create compelling, search-engine friendly sites in order to attract users, buzz, and often targeted traffic!

The comments you read here belong only to the person who posted them. We do, however, reserve the right to remove off-topic comments.

50 comments:

Jonathan Becker said...

This is fantastic. If it serves the correct results from Google's index, this should make search quite a bit more efficient. Can't wait to test how it works.

Mathew said...

this really good news. but I want to know up how many pages they’re shows in SERP for a single domain.

Steve Mc Smith said...

hi Mathew Up to four page results from each single domain.

samual james said...

hey its good but will you please tell me when someone search furniture in uk and google display 10 results. so google will show more results for 1st site or all site

Domain név regisztráció said...

Its not fair! People usually leave google default search result 10.So if google display 4 result from more relevant domain(who decide it?) many domain will loose position,value for sure.

I hope its clear what im saying....
Sam

NoahsDad said...

Surely it will be up to 4 results for the domain that ranks first and even then only when that domain is known to be highly relevant for the term.

I can't imagine a blanket up to 4 results for every domain or this being triggered by generic terms with no obvious dominant brand.

Furniture will continue to show 10 results while Furniture 123 will show 4 for the brand and 6 others (which could themselves be other brand related sites).

Stu said...

I agree with NoahsDad, is this only going to affect brand terms? If it affects generic terms too then anyone below position one needs to be prepared to see a loss in traffic.

The battle for top spot has just become even more important and harder, especially with the Google Place listings being introduced too.

dofollow said...

It should be only 2 result from single webpages with 2nd result having a expandable button ( View more pages from this site).

Like MOMO is also an eatable item in India so, I will not get desired result if I search for momo hoping for something else.

Barry said...

I'd like to know how Google determines which 4 pages to show...

Gurpreet said...

Harvey,

Thanks for update regarding multiple listings. I hope it will help customers to reach desired page directly without wasting any more time searching on website itself.

on the parallel side i was thinking of people competing for 1 or 2 potential keywords only. If they will well optimize the most potential 1-2 keywords of their respective industries on 5 or 6 main pages of their websites they will have very good possibility to occupy 4 out of 10 listings on the first page of Google and this will lead to the very less chances for the other relevant sites to come on first page.

Yes, it will make the job of the optimizers tough :)

admin said...

I don't like this feature. As a webmaster, I'd be happy to see my own site occupying the top four spots, but from a searcher's POV it's less good. If I'm looking for information, I'd rather see results from a variety of sites, not have almost half of the top 10 hogged by one domain.

For example, if you search for the name of one of the products I promote as an affiliate on my own site, the top four results are taken by the merchant. No suprise there - but one of those links is to their affiliate information page, and one is to a membership area login page. These pages may be 'relevant' to the term, but neither is going to be of much use to the average searcher who is just looking for information on the product, or who wants to buy it.

Why waste valuable 'top 10 real estate' like this? Those links would be better put in an indented list under the first result (as in your example screenshot), with the remainder of the listings going to different domains.

This isn't the only keyword where I've seen this happen either, and as a someone looking for unbiased information on a product from sources other than the merchant site, it's pretty frustrating.

dofollow said: "It should be only 2 result from single webpages with 2nd result having a expandable button ( View more pages from this site)"

- I agree with this. Giving two of the top spots to one domain is more than enough. The expandable link works well - let people have the option to see more results from one site if they want, but don't force it on them.

Griffon said...

This could be both good and bad feature as people are commenting.

It all depends on what are the "certain types of queries" you are talking about.

This had to be explained a bit further.

www.seostatstool.com

Saurabh Kumar said...

Agree with above. For example, there are words which mean many things. Is there a link between the word and the location of the person?
Also, a word might mean different with time.
With the Moma example above, the results might change with different ongoing events?

Adybee said...

Seems to be fantastic for brands - allowing both places and petit fours to integrate.
Does this mean that we need to place even more emphasis on brand names being found?

Florida Keys Info-Net said...

As I read these blog comments, I don't see anything about Google Local places pushing the top 10 listings for search over to the 2nd page where people are less likely to travel to.

Sounds like a one two punch for the little guy again.

Avi Rappoport / SearchTools.com said...

Right now, searching on zappos brings up seven results from the zappos.com site, and the eighth is their twitter feed. It seems a little low on diversity there.

Audiofeeline said...

One result per page, is this "evil" ? :/

gömbszörp said...

So, Google, who wants to see different and "compelling" websites in the very same time penalizes diversity.

Seems paradox to me.

Heather said...

It's showing for more brand searches or I should say google thinks there's a brand when it isn't. I don't like it. If you want to show more results for one domain do it under the main listing like you're doing with the mini sitelinks.

If I'm searching for Large Yellow Widget showing me a purple widget, a large widgette type thingie, and a ping pong ball on the same site isn't helping. Show me other sites with the exact item I searched for.

Has anyone ever looked at a results page and said "I wish 40% of these were from the same domain, that gives me MORE choice?"

The layout is unappealing to the eye as well. It doesn't look right, it's not consistent. This is not one of your better changes.

The "show more results" button accomplished the same thing without hurting everyone else and reducing consumer choice. By this logic you should remove 4 adwords ads from the first page and instead give us 3 other pages we may like on the adwords advertisers site.

Heather said...

I should have added you won't do this with Adwords because it would cost you money. Why are you doing it in the organic results then?
Change Adwords for a month, bump 3 off the first page and instead show the top 3 from the same domain. If that's what we "want" from organic why don't we "want" it in Adwords?

abcomputered said...

My fear is the 'old Google' is coming back where search results bring up useless sites just because a site is ranking and the content the user is looking for is buried.

Agam Panwar said...

This feature will off course kill the competition but on the other hand will help users. Good job done

Domain név regisztráció said...

Its a bug not a feature! :d

mamdoh said...

.: I think Google should stay with their petit four as an inline results, and show 9 other search results too in a page (Means 10 search results with 3 inline-related-petit results). That should be a real help for all users~~ ;-) :.

Faisal said...

Hi:

Its good to hear the changes being made in the Google algorithms and making search more and more easy for a user.

The fact is there, website should be persuasive and user friendly.

Thanks for the information.

Regards,

Faizan

Ali Nasir said...

I certainly agree with all those who doesnt like the idea. In this case search result will be given exposure for less domains. However I suggest that all 10 domain coming on first page should be different but there should be some rich snippete which can display multiple pages from same domain on some action.
Thanks

Manusmriti said...

really g8 news...

1 said...

nice

k said...

My site suffers dearly from this change.

Google once again assumes that they know where searchers want to go based on their skewed traffic and user behavioral data.

They think some sites deserve to have 4 listings because the traffic data support those sites' popularity, yet the data was already skewed because it's a known fact that those existing number one listing sites have about 60% of the traffic.

But being #1 for specific keywords does not equate to high quality website. Who can guarantee all the number one listing sites are better than the number twos or threes.

Google decides to reward one site but punish the rest of the sites by pushing them below the fold. Is this the way to provide the best service?

Good luck. No wonder more people are starting to use other alternatives.

mortgage calculator said...

Its a great feature if I am looking at a specific domain for instance "BMW" . I wouldn't mind if there are 4 listings from the same domain. However if I am looking at a very generic word Real Estate and then you guys are trying to show one particular domain listings 4 times then it doesn't make sense and its unfair to other companies. This results should only work for a very specific search like search of a company or a person .

Salomon said...

I agree. For generic search terms like „real estate“ or “car auction” it doesn’t help the user to get 3 – 4 times the same domain called that search term. Especially for the very competitive terms you get lots of different interesting sources no need to show 3 – 4 times the same domain. Actually strange / funny that you guys didn’t think about that before you implemented it. Please let me know your point of view on that.

Robert Redl said...

I agree with "Stu". There will be even more stress to get and stay on position number 1. If I think about small display (netbooks, smartphones) the #1 position would give make you the "monoculture" of your top terms.

Dipak Patil said...

very Useful Information

Uwelcome said...

Has any one lost traffic because of these changes. My Traffic count has gone down by 75%. Any syggestion how to gain back my position on SERP.
Thank You

4:28AM said...

Is there a way to turn it off or shall I switch to blekko.com or something? I'm a journalist and researcher so I'm using Google search like 8 hours a day. Now I must say this "innovation" really turns the whole searching ergonomics upside down and seriousoly pisses me off. I need to scroll down 4 times more than before! If your search was pretty far from "I'm being lucky" first place and your result is, say on the 257th place - which happens very often, now I need to scroll, scroll, scroll and scroll! Jesus, is there a way to turn this off?!?!?!

pandiyarajan said...

If they show up 4 results in first page for a single website, how the other relevant websites will rank or get traffic for those keywords. Some sites will create the content with small variation in 4 pages and they only reach on the top place. others thoughts?

Muqeet Soomro said...

Thanks google! you are preferring the domain. The Question is rise, How many pages you show. Can it may effective on subdomains such as http://www.theamazeworld.blogspot.com/ Once again I thank you

Yuri Suarez said...

Great tools for webmasters

Wojtek said...

Well done. That will encourage webmasters to switch over to black hat SEO, because now it's "everything or nothing". Either you are the first one or you are nobody.

Vincent said...

IMHO The concept behind this is fine, but implementation maybe needs a tweak.
One way could be to have just one spot per domain with a large + sign for users to 'expand' "more results from this domain"?

Harry said...

A very unfair practice. A taxi company registered urls for every town in our county, so that any search for a taxi in a town offers that company not only #1 spot but #2. #3, #4. So searches are NOT producing helpful results. Other 8 competitors are buried. And what room is left on smart phones?

Cisco said...

I think the MoMa example is a poor one. IMHO, the additional 2 results don't improve the experience. Why would the fourth result "MoMa | Tim Burton" out rank some of the results below it? It doesn't seem relevant to the search. Also, why does "MoMa | Exhibitions & The Collection" appear as a result when it's already a sitelink for the first result? This seems unnecessarily repetitive. I would suggest changing this to 2 results. I understand Google's thought process around this but it may need some tweaking. The reason why Google is great is because it shows relevant results and gives people a variety of sources to choose from. If people want more results from a single domain then perhaps there's another process or interface that people could get this done through. I know there's better examples than MoMa that portray the effectiveness of the added results but I still think it needs some tweaking. I like the thought process and reasoning behind this change but I'm not a fan of the results. Please keep innovating around this change. I know you guys use tons of data before making these changes but the interpretation of this data may need some tweaking.

Harry said...

brand terms fine, but non brand? - Im seeing this favouring web giants with snowballing site authority - not democractic or fair to smaller site owners. Big questions marks????

EfoodsGlobal said...

I think this will not be good for the searcher at all or the little guy. Let us do a little work to find the resting place of our search for what we are looking for. This is anarchy from Czar Google. Go Face Book.

Terry said...

Hi, I am an ordinary search engine user, and would like a way to stop the search showing more than 1 result per site. I want to see the maximum number of sites with a relevance to my search, so I now need to wade through many more pages of results to see the same number of sites that match my request. I do not want to know that one site has many possible results matching my request, just a higher level "is this site of interest" single result. Can this perhaps be achieved with a user specific search setting? Might not be what a site owner wants, but am I not supposed to be the one these ideas are being designed for?

pcampagna said...

STUPID STUPID STUPID!!!! what about the people who worked hard to get ranked on the first page, then in one day, they are pushed to page three while the same site has 10 listings? How is that even close to making sense? PLEASE CHANGE THIS BACK!!! I can't believe this was even thought of as a good idea by google. Why do i want the same information repeated to me multiple times?

horry said...

Seems to be fantastic for brands - allowing both places and petit fours to integrate.
Does this mean that we need to place even more emphasis on brand names being found?

lordjoe said...

This is a really dumb move, I am finding that for many searches I see only 2 domains in the top 10 results and in many cases at least one is fairly irrelevant. While there are time when I WANT multiple results from the same domain (indeed times when one domain has almost all of the results I care about) The number of results from a domain is something a user should be able to adjust and set the default value in their preferences.

MagudeeswaranKrishnaswamy said...

Hi, This is not good idea
1.people want which fetch which is the best result only
2.more then one URL contain the same result means that website is contain duplicate data are contend stuffing for the same keyword
3.we give a chance some other URL's in the same keyword targeting, this help people find out variety of answers in same keyword

Google Webmaster Central said...

Hi everyone,

Since over a year has passed since we published this post, we're closing the comments to help us focus on the work ahead. If you still have a question or comment you'd like to discuss, free to visit and/or post your topic in our Webmaster Central Help Forum.

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The Webmaster Central Team