Two nights ago as I was checking on some of our Google rankings for Train Signal I noticed something significantly different, there was a tabbed area directly below the search box and above the sponsored listings.
So it’s definitely pulling in related searches, but it’s being selective on what it pulls in. Some of the related searches for “Train Signal” include competitors and luckily it’s not pulling that, but it’s also pulling searches that I’ve never seen on our related searches or even on the Wonder Wheel.
I woke up this morning and quickly fired up the computer to see if I can mess around with this feature again, but Google had taken this interesting piece away… for now. My guess is this is going to be part of the Google Caffeine update after the holidays.
From the perspective of a Google user I like it, definitely an upgrade on the search results interface. From the perspective of a SEO/PPC user I definitely think it’s added a whole new element that changes both SEO and PPC strategy to a degree. I’d have to think it’ll reduce CTR’s on sponsored links, but who knows you might suddenly get a lot more impressions because of users using the related search tab over to your keyword term. Either way this is probably one of the most interesting changes I’ve seen on the Google search result page in a long time.
November 24th, 2009 at 8:19 am
I have also notice it, before my blog was top ten on different keyword, but now my blog rank is going decrease on google SERP.
November 25th, 2009 at 5:13 am
As a Google user, I think it looks like a useful feature… and I don’t think it’s going to hurt you much from a webmaster SEO point-of-view either.
Of course the main goal will be to show up on the main, default SERPS page. This is where the traffic will be. Think of the other pages as a “second chance” to get noticed by people who aren’t finding what they want on the main page.