Will Google Organic Search Results Dissapear for Certain Niches?
November 20, 2009 by Pablo Palatnik
As Google search gets more complex with its universal and paid search, the structure of search results are fast changing and this mean SEOs will have to start looking at this and trying to predict where to go. In a post by Aaron Wall from SEOBook, he writes in a post, “Excuse Me, But Where Did Google’s Organic Search Results Go?,” about certain niches almost having no organic results to the searchers eye.
In the image illustrated, look at how far down the organic search results are. Basically, in the past, (in this example looking at the image) YELP would have been first in the listings and drive the most traffic from its 1st position organic ranking. Now, paid search as well as local search has surpassed the authority of the organic listings.
As Wall describes, let’s look at the structure of this search page:
>> AdWords Ads: the ads at the top of the search results and those which run down the right rail of the search results.
>>Universal Search Results: filler stuff to put in the search results to a.) drive the organic search results lower down the page, while b.) driving additional incremental click volume to other Google properties which display ads.
>> Organic Search Results: the results on the search result page that are determined algorithmically and appear below the fold. On some larger monitors a listing or 2 from this category may appear above the fold, at least for the time being.
He goes on by saying, “In the future A LOT of verticals (movies, music, books, news, ecommerce, travel, etc.) are going to look more and more like local, where Google in some cases has at least 15 ads above the fold AND filler pushing down the organic search results…quietly building a backdoor portal that sends Google the second click if they were not able to monetize the first one.”
So, if you’re in verticals that you are starting to see a lot of changes in the search page or can forecast it as I am seeing the same with e-commerce as we are now seeing image ads pop-up, start looking forward and determining where you need to go next with your search strategy.
