Google has raised the visibility of its “pages similar” to feature in its Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Organic results returned for a given search query – particular brands or specific websites – may now feature a list of results that are deemed “similar”.
Google Software Engineer Doantam Phan writes on the official company blog that these results have been accessible for “a while now” but that it “hasn’t been too visible”. Before, similar results were accessible via a link on the same line as the website URL.
Now these results could appear in a list of “pages similar” at the bottom of SERP, raising their visibility and making it much more likely to attract users attention. According to Phan, Google has been “continuously improving this feature” and has found that it “helps you easily find new websites that are similar to the ones which you’ve already been familiar.”
This feature adds an additional element to search engine marketing via Google; as Chris Crum of WebProNews notes, “if someone searches for a brand, there is a good chance Google will inject links to the competition on that results page by default.”
Since Google will make use of a similar algorithm to calculate which pages are “similar”, as this feature becomes more understood it could become an a tool for search engine optimisation strategies.
For now though, the feature is still being rolled out across the company’s data centres. UK SEO agencies, for example, don’t yet have to consider raised visibility of “similar” pages in the SERPs on Google.co.uk.
Related posts:
