Google Displaying More Pages from Domains

Emily Creech - August 25, 2010

Those familiar with the search engine landscape have probably noticed that in most cases only one or two lines per website will display in the search engine results pages of Google.   Well, the days of having only one or two listing per website has come to an end… for specific keyword phrases at least.

Google recently announced on their Webmaster Central blog that they will now be showing more results per domain.   Google has always stated that their goal is to provide relevant results as quickly as possible to a searcher.   With this recent update, they hope that users will now be able to find what they are looking for faster than before.

A handful of listings for one domain will appear for a single search query when the user searches for a keyword or phrase that indicates that they have a strong interest in a particular domain. For example, if you conduct a search for “Search Engine Land”, you will likely see a results page similar to the one below.   (Notice how many listings lead you to the Search Engine Land website.)

This change has some pros and cons for marketers.   If you want to capture traffic from a competitor and someone specifies in a search your competitor’s name, it could possibly be harder than before to capture visits to your website via organic search from these types of search queries.   This could be good, on the other hand, when users are searching for keywords that are specific to your website.   In this case, you have even greater potential to capture this traffic, as your domain will be able to practically own the first page of listings!  

We’ll be keeping an eye on how this impacts clients and we encourage you to do the same for you own website!