In an official blog post titled Search quality highlights: 52 changes for April, Matt Cutts announced that Google introduced a change to its algorithm because “sometimes search returns too many results from the same domain”. He stated that “this change helps surface content from a more diverse set of domains.”
I know of way too many examples indicating that this change hasn’t been effective at all but in this blog post I will only highlight one example that really gets on my nerves.
Search for “care homes in staffordshire” and you will get the following result. There are 9 results from the same domain name as you can see in the screenshot, 8 of which are dominating the top results. How is this domain diversity?
Well, you have looked at the first page but what is happening on the second page for the same query? You get another 5 set of results from the same domain that is dominating the first page. Here is the screenshot:
Want to see something even more shocking? Look at the third page, the entire page is full of results from a single domain name.
There is no such thing as “domain diversity” by the looks of it, looks like if a site produces a ton of filtered pages then they can simply own the SERPs.
Update:
Matt Cutts has acknowledged this on Twitter:
@ysekand I passed that article plus the blank page post on to the correct respective teams in the search quality group.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) July 19, 2012
Ugh, what a mess. I am seeing plenty of this but I have to admit not quite on this scale.
To make matters worse the pages returned are all pretty much the same and are a dynamically generated set of search results.
Hi Marcus,
Yes. That means two problems:
1. Lack of diversity
2. Low quality pages dominating results
I’ve been seeing a ton of this too…TripAdvisor seems to dominate pages 1-3 for a hotel client of mine, even on branded terms (their brand, not TripAdvisor). Even worse, a lot of the TA results are duplicate content or regional/country-specific content that is mostly duplicate, which creates a terrible search experience for everyone…
Hi Nick,
I noticed this with TA as well, these kind of search results encourages people to create loads of useless pages just for the SEs.
Haha I know, right! I thought the whole point of Panda was to kill off the SERP clutter, now they’re rewarding it again #smh
Sad, but true. I have noticed the same exact thing in my real estate searches. Only “top” brands get like 5 or more results… such crap! But I guess there is always Adwords to fall back on….lol
It is sad, it looks like Google has gone a step backwards. They might say these are isolated cases but we all known that is completely inaccurate.
Yousaf; I have no idea if there is correlation between this and Panda updates or not, but I will tell you this, as of today (7/18/12) Google acknowledged roll-out of Panda in Japan & Korea, and also as of today; there is now an extreme lack of domain diversity showing in, at least, the Japanese SERP’s, see here; http://www.google.co.jp/search?q=aquos+phone+zeta+sh-09d+%E5%8F%A3%E3%82%B3%E3%83%9F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&hl=ja#q=aquos+phone+zeta+sh-09d+%E5%8F%A3%E3%82%B3%E3%83%9F&hl=ja&prmd=imvns&ei=GrkGUMzhG5Ca8gTe2MnwBw&start=0&sa=N&fp=1&biw=1304&bih=707&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&cad=b&sei=ORgHUOmFDaXx6AGD9PSLAg
Furthermore, in keeping with your experience of diving deeper into results pages and seeing the same domain, Kakaku continues to own 80-90% of results for the full first 4 pages… unbelievable that this is considered some sort of improvement?
Noticed the panda notification earlier today, it will shake up japanese results due to the percentage affected.
This is one of my major issue with G at the moment. Seriously, just give me the most reliant page from each domain, I’m fine with that! The issue gets worse if, like me you have your SERP’s set to 100 results often.
…I’m not seeing this issue in bing….
Wow. This is an awesome example.
Another problem of this update is, that if you search for programming related problems, then Google also shows alot stuff from a single domain (which is often not releted to the query) Not that bad as in your example, but it’s still annoying. In my opinion it would be better if they would simply give the option “show me more results of that domain”, instead of doing this :/
Garbage isn’t it? Google’s algorithm seems pretty broken to me right now. Loads of thin sites with exact match domains rankings, editorial sites ranking where e-commerce sites should be and, as you’ve pointed out, multiple results from the same domain.
It’s certainly keeping us SEO’s on our toes but half the time I don’t know whether to take action or ride the storm in the hope that something will change soon.
It’s the same in the german index and certainly no isolated cases. Especially in popular niches like travel, telco, insurance and consumer electronics. While I understand that some focus on brands certainly doesn’t hurt, the SERPs look a bit like Altavista in the early days.
Even worse, many of the pages from these authority sites aren’t even really related to the search term. Like you said, not only variety is suffering, but relevancy, too.
Seriously. Google claims that it is improving the state of search, but looking at your example Yousaf, its clearly not the case here. 3 pages throwing up almost the same domain name sounds highly odd when you consider Google decided on going for domain diversity in SERP’s
Well as someone trying to do better, then make worse elsewhere.
Nothing is perfect. Even Google is not perfect.
I remember when Amazon dominated SERPs (multiple listings on a page) with subdomains (2007 – 2009 I believe). Then Google acknowledged and removed that ability in exchange for diversity.
Then in Aug 2010 they allowed a single domain to dominate a page again (citing Apple as a good example of someone who should get the opportunity), then that sort of died down with some updates.
Now it’s back and really sloppy. I can’t help but think with Panda and Penguin they pushed their algorithm too far to control all this sloppiness.
I have to think non-SEOs are noticing this too.
Try WordPress beginners and see what you get. The same domain taking over 6 positions on one page of results.
Very effective Matt
….. it seems becoming better during the last days.
Thanks a lot for your efforts. It made me crazy having 35 Amaz post over the first 4 pages
Things seem worst in case of programming websites also. Just search “C# dataset to datatable” while paging you will be shocked by multiple results of stackoverflow and msdn on more than 15 Pages.
This is pathetic, how can we reach other websites having best results or We have to Start searching on google from 15th page
I see the same here, we have gone back several years. Google obviously feels I don’t know how to use a search engine and repeats what it thinks I should look at. It is so patronising, I will have to try Bing – what else can I do if the results are so narrow?
Maybe this is why Marissa Mayer left? There’s a serious problem with Google and she saw an opportunity to take Yahoo! into that breach. The latest changes at Google are helping no one, especially their decision to make Google Shopping another batch of paid links. Have you tried Google Shopping lately? It’s horrible.
Every empire must fall, Google is not excluded just like IBM wasn’t. Every 10-15 years we see dramatic shifts in the technology sector, Google’s “monopoly” in search will wane, they are lucky as there is no real competition right now. Some hungry 20 something year old is probably coding something awesome that will change the world, we just need to wait and see.
In a recent fireside chat, Peter Thiel made a good case against Google, asking Schmidt why the company was hoarding $50b in cash, the truth is, Google doesn’t know what to do with, it has kind of reached the ceiling when it comes to search technology. They missed the social networking boat, it has and it will cost them heavily. Remember Bill Gates’s infamous Internet Tidal Wave memo?
Point well taken Yousaf, at our tam we appreciate any useful feedback such as this one. Our goal at Google was and is to serve the most useful content to users not to have click on ads. Any increase on ad clicks is merely coincidental.
Matt Cutts
Head of Google’s Webspam Team
[...] è parlato molto di alcune serp molto improbabili sia nei forum che in articoli di protesta (come questo), ma questa penso che le superi tutte Non mi era davvero mai capitato di vedere 10 pagine [...]
I’ve been seeing this a lot and it appears to be a side-effect of Penguin’s love for strong brands.
I work in travel and have noticed 2 different scenarios of Google ‘brand rank’ affecting the SERPs.
1) cheapflights.co.uk – Perform a search including the PHRASE ‘cheap flights’ and Google presumes you must mean the BRAND, so displays about 6 results from that domain.
2) skyscanner.net – Search for the BRAND ‘airflights’ and you get no less than seven skyscanner results on page 1 just because the copy contains the phrase ‘air flights’. Google must consider SkyScanner so strongly as a brand that 7 of their subpages are supposedly more relevant than any subpage of the website belonging to the brand I was searching for in the first place.
It’s a farce.
Take a look at this link: http://www.andreapernici.com/easter-egg-google/, there are 2 examples of Italian SERP where a domain takes up 15 pages…
Yousaf, I’ve seen a bit of this (usually 3 or 4 listings on a page) but the example you give there takes the cake!
carehome.co.uk must have some SEO gurus working for them.
A well illustrated problem Yousaf thank you – I actually have a client for whom I’m targeting ‘care homes berkshire’ (and ‘care homes Reading’) and I noticed the same thing around the Penquin update – the same ‘carehomes.co.uk’ business directory has taken most of the top slots, with more on page 2 and the entire page three results – just like your example! I manage to get a listing in between on page 1 through Google Places. I hope Google respond to your evidence soon and we can see some variety in the results again.
I’ve noticed some results with the first 5-7 pages being entirely dominated by a single domain. It seems like something in the latest algorithm update is making it near impossible to rank for some branded terms, but it’s not across the board. Try searching for any HP product, for example.
it mean not enough results for that keyword, with latest panda and penguins lot of sites penalized – so google show what still not penalized
Good one Yousaf….I too noticed the weird SERP results for some of my clients…..I strongly believe that google is now forcing people to use PPC…
Hi Dipen,
Since the last major algo update, Google’s financial report indicates a rise in advertising revenue. I don’t want to jump into conclusions but it does look like they are making update based on commercial motives. In a way, I don’t blame them they are a public company so the interest of shareholders is paramount.
Good catch good saying Yousaf… actually day before yesterday when I am trying to search with couple of keywords it shows me first 40 results of Yellow Pages only and yesterday with another keywords it shows me first 17 result of Youtube only…
This is really ridiculous and not acceptable results are showing by Google in this days… hope this will be fix by Google soon…
Yousaf. i have noticed that no. one organic ranks websites are getting merely about 8% of traffic and it is due to a lot Google new tricks for paid search, show long site links, local extension with paid ads, tel. no, and of course related search. Thanks for sharing this and I have seen a lot of these in recent time even after Penguin update…
This means google attitude to Small Websites is just like “Go to Hell, small websites”
This way only crocodiles on internet survive, small fishes Get ready to be cooked
[...] Dear Matt Cutts, Domain Crowding Is Shockingly Broken [...]
I dont want to sound dramatic here but anybody else feel google very slowly losing the plot? No company dominates an industry forever and it feels as if the very first cracks are appearing. These are pretty basic errors we are seeing here that really shouldn’t exist.
[...] By contrast, Google has done great job at making search more relevant with their entities, but, have they dropped the ball on “Site Clustering” or “Domain Crowding” despite of many complains? [...]
September now I am still having the same problem of domain crowding when I am logged into my google account. To resolve this issue I have to loggout and delete all cookies from my browser in order to get a decent result set. At this rate, believe me I am starting to look on Bing or other search engines. I think if google does not fix this now they will lose users quickly. Including myself.