Google Fights “Pogostick Searchers” With New “Get More” Option

It’s common for searchers to do a search, click on a result, then go back to the results page and select another listing or do a new search. Now Google’s fighting this “pogosticking” behavior, as it is known, with a new feature – “Get More” links that appear when a searcher comes back to the results page.

This is unique. No major search engine has ever altered the results page once rendered, when someone comes back to it after being dissatisfied with a particular listing.

To understand more, consider this search for [smiley html code]:

Here, I’ve searched for smiley html code and gotten these discussion forum results shown. I click on the first link, then return to the results page. Now it has changed to show this:

See the “Get more discussion results” link. That shows as a way to help people get back more results that are similar to the one they initially selected and which perhaps will better match their query.

We covered this experiment on discussions earlier but since then, Google has said other classes of search will generate them, including date, videos, and discussions type of results.

Google said they are doing this as a way to help people find results that they were previously dissatisfied with.

I was unable to find any other examples of this in the Google search results, but if you see any, please comment with examples.