For most online marketing outsourcing companies, every movement, update or changes in SEO, SEM algorithms are critical as these would have some impact on their online marketing and optimization efforts. Regular monitoring of search engine results page on specific targeted keywords is equally important and critical as this would be an indicator of whether or not the marketing and optimization efforts are paying off in terms of page rankings. And those who are closely monitoring the SERPs must have noticed a significant and obvious change.
It used to be that search engines like Google would normally bring out ten websites on each page of their SERPs for every search query made. Depending on the website’s page ranking and optimization value, ten websites are to appear on every page of the SERPs. And as most SEO and outsource internet marketing companies would do, they will target their site to be included, say in the first or top page of the results page. Even if their site lands on 8th or 9th or even 10th position, the site will still be at the first or top page.
Recently, however, Google has been observed to be moving away from the customary 10 listings per results page down to displaying only seven listings. It has also been observed that one site dominates the results.
Dr. Peter Meyers of SEOmoz pointed out that “about 20% of the search engine results pages or SERPs at Google now show only 7 listings.” With this, one is inclined to think that Google is trying the new display format to whether “sitelinks” appear with listings.
Apparently, when a search query is made, and the search query word matches the domain, the domain’s results show sitelinks, then only 7 listings will appear on the SERP. While sitelinks often appear for brand names, they are apparently appearing now on the SERPs because Google had instructed their spiders to include sitelinks in their search.
Here’s a sample of the said new number of results:
With this observation, online marketing outsourcing companies are concerned about site domination, which in the mid-2010, Google officially declared “that in some cases, there are sites which might be able to dominate all the results” – which leads most people in the SEO business to think that Google is making another expansion on site domination.
However, when the search done uses general keywords, it still shows its normal 10 site listings. Here, search engine optimization companies who have been doing all white hat technique and was not hit by Google’s Panda nor Penguin updates continues to give a tough battle in ranking number one.
This goes to show that the current number seven as Google’s new SERP depends on the type of query a user does. It does not follow that the said search engine will only display seven results to every query done and that the number of results is still search specific.
Here is a sample of results for a generally used keyword:
In an official statement, Google declared, “We’re continuing to work out the best ways to show multiple results from a single site when it’s clear users are interested in that site. Separately, we’re also experimenting with varying the number of results per page, as we do periodically. Overall our goal is to provide the most relevant results for a given query as quickly as possible, whether it’s a wide variety of sources or navigation deep into a particular source. There’s always room for improvement, so we’re going to keep working on getting the mix right.”
Even though an online marketing company goes on with white hat practices, the future of search does not guarantee top ranking if the trend continues. Digital marketing will drastically change if this new rule will be implemented. So, as early as now, the need to be on top is crucial as this helps a website’s branding. To be able to be included in the future of search, the job needs to be polished now before it is too late.
