More threads by Dan Foland

Dan Foland

SEO Director at Postali
Local Search Expert
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I started noticing this in late 2018, but it's very possible this has been going on far longer. A little after I started noticing it I started saving screenshots. I'm curious if anyone else has noticed this, or if I just didn't notice it earlier. Here's my article with more examples: Google Search Results Showing Consecutive Same-Site Results


Example:
BUX.png
 
Yes, I've noticed it recently as well as some other oddities/new features.

The following screens appeared while doing some research for a local business. The first screen shows several local businesses replacing the normal Google Ads. The Google Ads appeared further down the page. Then, once you selected the -> More (local business type) hyperlink, the second screen appeared.

Obviously, a new feature being tested/rolled out.
DISCLAIMER: All personal information and faces have been blurred to protect the innocent. ;-)
4190

4191
 
@Dan Foland Yeah I noticed that as well. In my opinion Google tries to give page value more credit and if the homepage has kind of the same quality as a specific website inside the same sitemap, it is shown more often. It makes totally sense to me but it could lead to a more monotone rank listing as the 10th place will land on the 2nd page and so forth... The algorithm was basically just considering different websites as a whole and is apparently shifting to a more individual evaluation. I'm curious where this will lead to.

@tangerinemoons That´s Google Local Services. It has been launched in just a few industries and areas and is not available to everyone. I signed up for the launch notification as I think this could be a great chance to promote local businesses.
 
@Tim# Interesting take. I actually have the opposite take. I think Google is giving the domain more credit rather than page value.

This thread was VERY timely. Google just announced an update to their algorithm to prevent this from happening:


I also tweeted about this issue to Danny Sullivan and John Mueller In January:


Danny Sullivan said he would "Pass it on."
 
I've been finding that returned results were not getting me to the answers I wanted. It was especially bad in technical searches when half the results were from stackexchange for example, but none of the links provided were close to what I was even searching for. Getting some other domains in there might be better.
 
Google search update aims to show more diverse results from different domain names
by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land
June 6, 2019

Google announced on the Search Liaison Twitter account just now that it has updated its search results to show a more diverse set of search results. That means Google will aim to show no more than two results from the same domain for a particular query in the top results.

More diverse Google results. Searchers, along with SEOs, have complained over the years that sometimes Google shows too many listings for the top search results from the same domain name. So if you do a search for a particular query, you may see 4 or 5 of the top ten results from the same domain name. Google is looking to not show more than two results from the same domain with this search update.

Google said “A new change now launching in Google Search is designed to provide more site diversity in our results.” Google added, “This site diversity change means that you usually won’t see more than two listings from the same site in our top results.”

But not always. Google said it does reserve the right to show more than two results from the same domain name when it thinks it is appropriate. “However, we may still show more than two in cases where our systems determine it’s especially relevant to do so for a particular search,” Google wrote. I suspect this is related to branded queries, so if you are searching for a brand, like Amazon, you likely will see more than just two results from amazon.com listed in the search results.

Read more...
 
@Tim# Interesting take. I actually have the opposite take. I think Google is giving the domain more credit rather than page value.

...

Well, I thought so too and it was probably just selective perception that more search results from the same main page were shown up. Was just trying to find an explanation for it. Great tweet btw! That´s nice to read. That´s a good trend.

I think if you have a broader search term, it would make sense to show more results from the same page(if the page is the leading authority) rather than showing less quality results from different pages. But if the search is very specific, it doesn't make so much sense to show a lot of results from the same page as a specific information shouldn't be double present. (duplicate content)
 

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