Remember the non-branded keyword mobile research I did earlier? Not only did the search result show my company’s website, but it also showed other websites with my non-branded keyword in their title tags. What this experiment reveals to us is that even if  these updates are important to SEO or not, it’s in everybody’s interest to optimize every opportunity that we have for a website to rank and get click-throughs in the SERPs. Key TakeawaySeeing rankings go from NOT IN TOP 100 to the first page of Google is what we live for as SEO specialists. Thank you rank tracking software! But a few days go by and you noticed that your website’s organic traffic is still low and it got you thinking – “my website is ranking on the first page of Google but, why am I not gaining any clicks and visitors to my website?” Only to find out that your website is not even on the first page! WHAT?! (As we all know, no one checks the second page of search results) This is because some search queries on Google will result in showing only 9 or even worse, only 7 search results.

Wait, you didn’t know that? Yes

this has been happening since April 2012 and you may not be aware of this up to today. Because in the past, it wouldn’t happen so often but now search results pages are using this as the staple. 7 – 9 results are far more common today than ever before. Google Search Results: Shrinking Number of SERPs If you try searching on Google right now, there is a good percentage of results pages that only show 7 to 9 results on the first page instead of the usual 10. This has been first noticed by Dr. Pete in April 2012 which he wrote on his SEOmoz blog Here’s the graph from the first time he noticed it: SERPS Less than 10 Results This just shows the rise of first-page search results that show less than 10 listings.

From 2% it drastically increased to

18% within two days. Another follow-up study was done by Larry Kim, in support of what Dr. Pete discovered. Based on his investigation, he noticed that: 100% of the organic search results that contained sitelinks also had other SERPs features with 7 or fewer organic listings. 100% of the organic search results that did not contain sitelinks had the usual 10 organic listings. But the data you’re showing is from 10 years ago, is it relevant until now? YES! As Google never looked back and instead implemented it into more of its search results. ‘7 is the New 10!’ Gone are the days when you will see precisely 10 search results on the first page of every Google search result.

This has been the case for a lot of search queries

for branded keywords ever since that change in April 2012. And now there’s a new trend on Google’s search results, this is where it only shows 9, 8, and worst 7 links even for non-branded, generic keywords! A thing I noticed is that in many search engine results pages (SERPs) nowadays is a rising amount of SERPs Features on every search query. And this has impacted every organic result as most of these SERPs Features have taken over and knocked down some of the coveted organic ‘blue links’ down to the second page. Another thing that changed the world of ‘search’ is that it functions more like a ‘search feed’ rather than a ‘search listing’.

As these two things may sound the same but

they are not. A ‘feed’ is more like  azerbaijan phone number library   the idea of social networking platforms, where the content shown is intended to keep users scrolling with endless results. Wherein the concept of a ‘list’ before is specific and straightforward Top 10 results and that’s it. scrolling search feed This certainly indicates how the digital world has evolved, at which point users are conditioned to scroll endlessly. The domination of social networking platforms in user engagement and retention has made search engines adapt to it. At the end of the day, both search and these social networking platforms are advertising-based industries that earn through ad impressions. ‘Finding 10’ – Nowhere to be found! Try searching on Google on a desktop device right now, and I bet you that most of your search results will show fewer than 10.

Here are a few examples you can try searching:

Advertising: 9 results Glamorous Camping: 8 results Food Delivery Manila: 7 results Kid-friendly Places in Makati: 9 results Those are just some of the results I got while testing multiple queries on a desktop in incognito and normal mode of Chrome. As you can see I tried to search using short-head terms and longtail terms, and most of the results do not show the 10th listing in the SERPs. But also keep in mind that these SERP results and layout may differ in every country so the number of snippets on the first page can change. Organic Results V.S. SERP Features As I got curious about SERP Features (events, top stories, and knowledge panels) and how it affects Google search results, I tried to look for other people’s analysis regarding this.

I found a very interesting case study done by

Kevin Indig, an SEO  what is imap for email – and how does it work practitioner. SERP Features And the image below is the data Kevin gathered with his investigation into knowing the relationship between organic results and SERP Features. Note: “1” means the SERP Feature appeared above the first organic results; “5” means it appeared before the fifth organic results, etc SERP Features Research The data above also supports the assumption that SERP Features do affect the number of organic listings in Google search results – the more SERP Features appear leads to less number of organic results. More data and research is needed to fully establish the relationship between organic results and SERP Features. But the research above shows a pattern in its results and this could help jumpstart a full thesis on this topic.

How does this affect SEO? These changes will

profoundly affect SEO. As it is canada data   already visible and taking effect on Google search results – however, we do not have enough data regarding the shift of search engines from showing the classic ‘lists’ to user engagement and retention-focused ‘feeds.’ So this is very alarming, especially for SEO companies and practitioners that rely on software in tracking the rankings of their clients. Rank-tracking software does not necessarily display if your website is  logical solution. One of our partners, SEranking, is working on a solution to show TRUE first-page rankings as we write this blog.