Ever run a query through Google sometimes and then wonder why half, if not all of the first page is a splatter of results featuring one site, just with different pages? If you're looking up a business or restaurant, you might only be getting Yelp listings. Or maybe you're looking for semi-scandalous news and it's all the Daily Mail? Well, the search behemoth is trying to kill off search spam with a change to its results optimizations focusing on site diversity.
The changes were announced yesterday on Twitter by Google's liaison for search, Danny Sullivan. He stated that in most cases, websites that own subdomains and root domains in common will generally be limited to two listings in the top results of searches.
Site diversity will generally treat subdomains as part of a root domain. IE: listings from subdomains and the root domain will all be considered from the same single site. However, subdomains are treated as separate sites for diversity purposes when deemed relevant to do so….
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 6, 2019
There will be some cases where more of a site's subdomains will feature in some queries as part of the diversity parameter. That said, instead of seeing results like these:
Not really affecting this query class. At least not yet. These are the top organic results after the local pack. pic.twitter.com/mORi3Iz43h
— Dan Leibson (@DanLeibson) June 6, 2019
You'll start to find results like these...
...where only the first two webpages are Yelp's, one from TripAdvisor, another from GrubHub, and the rest — in this case — are either independent restaurant sites or smaller aggregators like Yellow Pages or local media.
The diversity measures were rolled out in the past couple of days and appear to be live for most, if not all users right now.
- Source:
- @SearchLiaison
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