Search engines are changing all the time, and none more so than the world's most popular - Google. So although users and search engine optimisation specialists may have grown used to there being 10 results per page on Google search queries, they may have to adjust to there being significantly less.
'Make sure you're in the top ten on Google' has become something of a mantra in search engine marketing over the years, but soon it may be a cosier option to ensure you're in the top seven. Though there have been occasional search engine results pages (SERPs) with less than ten results for some time now, according to research by Peter Meyers over at SEOmoz, the number of SERPs on Google with just seven results jumped from 0.1% to 18.3% over just two days in mid-August. At present, he says, almost 20% of SERPs monitored by SEOmoz have only seven results.
So what's taking the place of those extra results?
In short, anything that Google believes to be useful to users. Expanded search results where other sub-pages of the same site are listed, image results in the main body of the search results and other 'improvements' are all appearing more frequently for some search terms. And because Google knows that users don't like to scroll down too far, in some instances their pushing results 8-10 back to page two.
While this isn't affecting all searches currently - it predominantly, but not exclusively, affects brand searches - it's something to pay close attention to. The difference in traffic and conversions between appearing at the bottom of page one and the top of page two can be significant, so it's worth checking your key search terms and keywords to see if they've been affected by Google's leaner results page.
As for what you can do to avoid being pushed out of page one, the answer is simple: try harder. If Google sees fit to only show seven results instead of ten, the best (and only) thing you can do is to do everything you can to rank somewhere between one and seven - ideally the former.
If you're website is cruising around the bottom of page 1 and you're concerned about being relegated to page 2, speak to your SEO agency to find out how you can diversify your strategy to make sure that regardless of the results shown on each page, your business will stay on page on of the SERPS.
You can view the data in full at (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/serp-crowding-shrinkage-its-not-your-imagination).
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