Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a new video about a new change coming to Google's search results related to the diversity of the results being displayed. Matt said that Google is launching "soon" a new change that will make it less likely to see results from the same domain name, if you already have been shown that domain name in previous results three or four times before. Matt explained that once you've seen a cluster of about four results from a specific domain name, the subsequent pages are going to be less likely to show you results from that domain name. To explain [...]

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There's been chatter about Google having done some type of algorithm update this week that's having an impact on rankings. Now it's finally confirmed, a new change meant to allow more domains to appear in search results. The head of Google's spam fighting team Matt Cutts tweeted this about it: Just fyi, we rolled out a small algo change this week that improves the diversity of search results in terms of different domains returned. Lately, more and more people have been noting that Google's search results can sometimes be dominated by pages that all come from the same domain. In other wor [...]

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It looks as if Google is testing a move away from showing the traditional 10 listings to only displaying seven, and it also appears that it's even easier than ever for one site to dominates all those results. 7 Blue Links We started getting reports last week about the 7-results change last week. Here's an example of it for a search on our own name, Search Engine Land: Here's another example, for eBay: When I looked at the eBay search on August 16, when we got our first report of the change happening, it was showing only 6 results. Now, there are 7, not counting the news listing. I don' [...]

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It's back. And it's bigger than ever. I'm talking about Google's monthly announcement of search quality/algorithm changes -- an announcement that the company skipped in July, making the one that they posted late Friday afternoon the biggest ever, with a reported 86 changes covering June and July. As I'm wont to do, below is a look at some of the items that caught my eye in reading about Google's changes. And as you're often wont to do, feel free to use the comments at the end to talk about the things that stand out for you. Site Clustering If you're a regular and active Twitter user, a [...]

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Most multinational sites will serve content via a Content Delivery Network (CDN). But not all CDNs are equal: what should you look for to get the best bang for your buck in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) across the globe? Since Google's Caffeine update to its server infrastructure back in June 2010, Google has stepped up the importance of page load speed to its core algorithm. But page load speed has always been important to Google in providing a good searcher experience for Google searches. And this is a logical stance if you take a second to think it through. After all, if you [...]

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In what's now to be a monthly update on search changes, a new Google "Inside Search" blog post today tells us that life is getting tougher for those with parked domains, life may get better for those plagued by scraper sites and those hoping to "push down" negative listings may have a tougher challenge. New Monthly Search Update The news comes from a post to the Google Inside Search blog, itemizing ten search-related changes that have been made. Google did a similar post like this last month, and now it confirms this will be a monthly update on what it considers to be noteworthy changes b [...]

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Generally, Google tries to show a varied set of search results, which among other things, means they'll only show up to two results from any single domain for a query (at least, on the first page). Exceptions have always existed. For instance, if you search for a domain, Google might only show results from that domain (see a search for [Google] for an example of this). A few months ago, they started showing more than two results from a single domain for other types of branded searches. At the time, Google said that this change was based on searcher intent: "this happens for searches that in [...]

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Prior to this week, Google would only show up to two results from the same domain on a single search result page. Now, Google has confirmed what many are seeing, where a single brand dominates a single page of Google's search results. This is not a bug, this is not an anomaly, it is an intentional change to Google's ranking algorithm. Google said: Today we’ve launched a change to our ranking algorithm that will make it much easier for users to find a large number of results from a single site. For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain. What I find interesti [...]

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A search for swine flu at Yahoo returns two indented results under the main results. As far as I know, Yahoo has only shown a single indented results under the main result. I am not sure if this is some type of bug or if Yahoo has decided to show more results from the same domain in certain cases. Here is a screen capture: Hat tip to Tom, a Search Engine Land reader for notifying us about this. [...]

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At Pubcon last week, Matt Cutts mentioned a change in the way Google handles subdomains. To better understand this change and what this means for search marketers, let’s revisit common site structure choices, how they’re handled by Google, and how that impacts SEO. Although URLs may take many forms, the overall structure can be distilled into one of three basic types: within a single domain (pages from the root of the domain as well as within subfolders), subdomains, and separate domains. Generally, a site begins with a single domain. You decide to sell widgets online, so you open [...]

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Matt Cutts of Google said at PubCon that Google will be treating sub domains similar to how they treat folders on a site. I reported this at the Search Engine Roundtable on a post by Tedster at WebmasterWorld, where Tedster said: News flash from Las Vegas PubCon. Matt Cutts informed us that Google will very soon begin treating subdomains and subdirectories the same in this fashion: there will be only 2 total urls from a domain in any set of search results, so no more getting 3, 4 or however many spots via subdomains. We didn't get any more information than just that basic heads-up. This is [...]

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