14 DAY TRIAL // Google has implemented a rather radical change to its ranking algorithms. In a complete reversal of its previous policy, Google Search will now list several results from the same website, for particular searches.
"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," Samarth Keshava, Software Engineer at Google, wrote.
"For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, like [exhibitions at amnh], we’ll now show more results from the relevant site," the blog post added.
Previously, Google limited the number of search results from the same domain to preserve relevance and have a diverse set of results in the first ten.
For most queries, this provides the best answers to users. However, for certain queries, where the user is clearly interested in a particular website, the old method didn't work very well.
Now Google will list more results from the same domain, even seven or eight out of the first ten results, so users can find exactly what they want. There will be a few results from other websites thrown in as well, to preserve diversity.
"We’re always reassessing our ranking and user interface, making hundreds of changes each year. We expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page," Google explained.
While the feature will come in handy for users in certain situations, the changes are still rather minor.
For webmasters though, the change has big implications as it pretty much turns on its head some of the SEO techniques applied so far.
Webmasters will adjust to the changes and will make the appropriate optimizations, but it will still take some time to get accustomed to them.