Google’s Organic Search Results Get A Space Consuming Facelift
Well as if it wasn’t hard enough to get your site onto the first page of the Google search rankings, things have just taken a whole new twist, the online search engine giants opting to increase the amount of space that a sites ‘sitelinks’ take up on the page.
With former sitelinks only filling a small area of the page up in the form of smaller text links, an alteration to the way in which Google want to present the links has now left websites that are looking to achieve first page rankings with a whole new obstacle.
As you can see from the images above, the sitelinks of a number of authority sites have been increased in not only font size but now also include a miniature version of the meta description as well as the URL of the page that the search giants believe are relevant to the user’s search.
Now as with anything, there are always two versions to every story and that means that if you are in fact one of the sites that are lucky enough to feature such exposure, your online presence will increase significantly on the page in which you are situated.
On the other hand, as I have already pointed out, if you are trying to overcome a competitor that has sitelinks, your struggle to get onto the same page as that site becomes a whole lot harder, simply due to the spacing needed for Google to present what they describe as ‘relevant’.
Investigation into the sitelinks used on many sites on the search engine’s organic results shows that not all sites that have them have been ‘promoted’ to the bigger, more space consuming version of the links, so whether this is something that Google are trialling with some of the more authority rich sites is still to be seen but they have certainly made competition for places a whole lot more competitive.
Now I’m not someone who likes to ‘sit pretty’ when I have achieved results and this will spark me to want to battle against many of the competitors to obtain the number one spot in the rankings, after all, you need something to challenge you in order to prevent you from being complacent.
Lee 651 days ago
“…has now left websites that are looking to achieve first page rankings with a whole new obstacle.” – I don’t think thats correct… its now generally easier to get on page 1.
Do a search for say “Comet” http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&biw=1334&bih=707&q=comet&oq=comet&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=8984l11119l0l11247l13l11l3l0l0l0l170l905l4.4l8l0 and you will see their top listing from comet.co.uk, its sitelinks and then 9 other listings.
Previously Comet.co.uk would have had several of the top 10 spots… leaving 5 or 6 for everyone else. So the people who were ranking 10th-14th or so for “comet” as a search phrase under the old sitelinks setup are now page 1.
I’m seeing this across dozens of brand searches I’ve been following, though not really seeing any extra traffic. Which isn’t surprising given the amount of scrolling that would be needed to to see a site ranking 10th when position 1 has those sitelinks…
Although its not all doom and gloom – for some phrases, if you were ranking reasonably well already you will now be showing higher up the page than before. If domain.co.uk had 7 of the top 10 spots before, and you were 8th, under the new system (them having 1 space and extended sitelinks) you will now effectively rank 2nd. Not a huge amount of space in it… but its the difference with being above the fold or not on a 15 inch macbook screen
Lee 651 days ago
btw your BBC example seems to be the odd one out rather than the normal. Most brand searches will not give the same domain the 2nd natural listing. Off the top of my head, try the same searches for Travelodge, Comet, Currys, Asda, PC World, River Island, Woolworths or probably any other high street store and they have all been restricted to 1 of the top 10 for that domain.
Craig Broadbent 651 days ago
http://www.fusionunlimited.co.ukHi Alex, hope your job is going well!
Looks like this is more for navigational queries? i.e. if you’re searching for BBC news then it’s unlikely you’ll want to go to a different site. But for something like free games it’s more ambiguous and likely the user will want a choice of sites.
I would expect that if this is fully rolled out it would only apply to major branded searches where it’s unlikely the user would want to go to a site other than the brand they searched for.
Deano 651 days ago
http://www.deano.deSeems like google are tying to make it harder for the small players, mama and pap sites etc. all the time and favouring the big brands. Maybe the only way a start up business, will be able to get close to the front page soon will be through adwords, or going ultra local..
Lee 650 days ago
How are you coming to that conclusion Deano? Like Craig says, it only appears to be for brand searches. I don’t think anyone can complain that they can no longer rank for someone elses brand
Dave Fowler 646 days ago
http://www.erocket.co.uk/For the BBC to dominate the page for the term ‘BBC news’ seems right and proper to me, with the extended sitelinks being genuinely beneficial to the user. What will be more controversial is if generic terms – that also happen to be brand names – lead to a similar domination by a single site. I’ve not seen any evidence of this yet?
Lee 646 days ago
I was trying to find some where a brand site has been built on a generic domain, that was now getting extended sitelinks, but can’t find any outside of B&Q getting it for “DIY”
Shibby 644 days ago
http://www.shibby.co.ilWell this kinda makes sense.
You would expect when searching in Google to see first the bigger site of what your looking for, and more of it.
So you can’t blame them for filling a bigger partition of the page with the best search for you and eliminate the small websites.
Instead of fighting this, why not try and make your website the biggest and most releavent?