Digital marketing update: Google's algorithmic change - Boon or Bane?

A few months back Google made a change in their natural ranking algorithm, which made searching for a large number of results from a single site much simpler for users. Keyword searches reflecting a strong user interest in a particular domain would now get more results from the pertinent site.

Before this change had occurred in the algorithm, only two results of the relevant domain were reflected on the search page. For instance, earlier a search query using the keywords exhibition at Tate Modern would only produce two results that were from the Tate modern site.

With this change in the algorithm, it was easy to determine that the user is interested in information pertaining to the Tate modern gallery, so more results from Tate Modern's site would start appearing. This helped searchers to arrive at their desired destination in lesser time.

Now Google has further added on to this feature, so that when suitable, more queries show more results from a particular domain. An advantage that this has for any digital marketing campaign is that targeted visitors will directly arrive at the page without getting lost amidst the plethora of digital information. Single-line snippets of the additional results will also be included to keep them compact.

Boon for some

Incremental and Iterative development is at the core of developing any application process in the digital world. Now with this reiteration, Google search results will show up to 4 results from each applicable domain, which basically means that now, there will be multiple results from several domains.

As before, this algorithmic change is going to benefit niche digital marketing campaigns. Those done for a unique, one of a kind brand or client. Even though Google will be providing links from other domains in their search results, digital marketing experts of these niche brands will have the ready benefit of occupying 40-50% prime digital real estate on the search page.

Bane for others

Since big fish like official brands and product sites will now have more Google branded traffic, the smaller fish will have to swim extra hard to make their presence known.

Digital marketing campaigns designed for such companies will have to be watertight when it comes to SEO techniques like keywords, meta-description and graphics so that it can attract more users. Digital marketing experts should monitor their entire keyword set to identify changes. It does mean swimming against the current but it is either 'swim or sink' for them.

Having more results on the first page is indicative of less visibility of your branded keywords by third party sites, whether negative or positive. Digital marketing experts need to be aware that positive third-party sites, which reiterate the brand's image, will also be pushed down in the ranking order.

Another prospective situation to develop out of this could be that retailers who were ranking high naturally because of particular branded keyword may decide to pay more for them to compensate for the lost traffic. Digital marketing teams should keep this factor in mind while planning their current campaigns.

A digital marketing flipside of this could be that users may not find these mono-domain centric search results appealing and may be prompted to leave the search engine and thereby the site as well.

It is now a matter of waiting and watching to see how users take to this new change.

Qudos Digital is a leading digital marketing agency and can be contacted on 020 8891 2077 or info@qudosdigital.co.uk

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