Google to Serve More Results for Some Queries

Darren Franks - December 6, 2010

Google just recently announced in their webmaster blog (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/) that they will be serving up to as many as four results for a query from one website, as opposed to the standard two. These four results are generated algorithmically, meaning Google will decide which four pages on your site will have the most relevance for a given search term. What does this mean for SEO and making sure your site is well set up for keyword targeting? How does this impact websites that aren’t as well versed at SEO as others?

For one thing, it seems as if Google really only shows multiple results from one website if the search term is very specific, i.e, when somebody searches for a specific brand or company. If a searcher were to type in the term “real estate”, the standard one result for each URL will still be listed. If a searcher were to type in, say, McDonalds, four results are shown from the company website. This is in addition to the local search results generated “place pages”:

So, in essence, larger companies with multiple locations can take up a lot of space in the SERPS.  

Smaller websites may fear that if some bigger websites are getting more results, that they may have their own results pushed further down the page. This would seem unlikely given the results we are seeing so far, but time will tell as to what this latest Google innovation will do for the industry.