In the old days of search marketing (yesterday), only two pages from your website could rank on the first page of a Google search –Google ranks web pages, not entire websites. So as good as your optimizing skills were, you could really only promote say, your home page and maybe an inner page such as your About Us page, for a particular keyword. Meanwhile, the other eight results would be reserved for your competitors.
Last week, however, Google announced that it will allow up to seven pages from one website to be listed on the first page of search results. Google limits search results to ten per page. Per Samarth Keshava of Google:
“For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain… we’ll now show more results from the relevant site…We expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page.”
Diversity on the results page? Excuse me, but allowing one company to dominate seven of ten search results hardly sounds diverse, even if the search is domain specific. Here’s an example that Samarth gives in regard to the American Natural History Museum:
I know the image is difficult to read, but the top seven listings are all different pages for the same website, the American Natural History Museum. Only three spots left for competitors or other options. How does this provide diversity? For a better look, enter exhibitions at amnh in the Google search box and see for yourself.
Now I must make it clear that I love Google. I really do. They are a brilliant group of “techies” that have provided new opportunities for small business owners and have allowed the small guy to compete with large corporations. They continually make great improvements to an already fantastic system. This recent change, however, is not one of them. It will lead to further exploitation by internet marketers who know how to “game the system,” meanwhile exiling other companies to page two or three. How often do you go to page two or three of your search results?
As for consumers, do they really need to see seven pages of the same website in their search results? If they are interested in a site, they can click on the listing and navigate the site themselves.
We will have to see how this all plays out and Samarth’s assertion that the change will be primarily “for queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain,” gives me hope. My interpretation is that normal searches will most likely render multiple and diverse results as they have been. If your search targets a particular website, company or domain specifically, then you can expect to see up to seven results for that website. Let’s hope this particular algorithm change does not evolve any further than that.
