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Google announced on Google+ that they have richened up their search results for sports related queries. They have these new "sports cards" that show when you search for sport related keywords on desktop, tablet and mobile.
Here are some examples of the results that, as you can see, really get rid of those ten blue links:
There is a huge amount of praise to Google for this new UI and search result interface on Google+ but I bet there are many SEOs, webmasters and publishers extremely concerned about this and the direction Google is headed.
Forum discussion at Google+.
Comments:
sestuff
03/21/2013 02:36 pm
Yeah, as with the calculators and the knowledge graph, this feature causes some families to worry about how they will pay their bills. Things will only get worst. Google is trying their best to squeeze us all out and it's only a matter of time...
ethalon
03/21/2013 03:10 pm
Lemon squeezers are next to feel the squeeze. Poor bastards.
Anthony
03/21/2013 04:09 pm
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. If it isn't - then what on earth are you talking about. Those well known sports scores websites which are family run? Barbara from 52 normal street running a stock market information website or a page with a calculator in it is going to go bust? Get real please these people do not exist, nobody gets hurt by Google showing these scores or working out some maths for you. Google is providing informational services which frankly you do not need to visit another website for. Google can't provide you with answers to a service query, small, medium and large businesses are safe. Example A: Google doesn't own hotels, so how can they show anything but websites for hotels? Example B: Google doesn't sell TVs, it will only provide results which link to external stores. Adwords creates ALL of Google's revenue, through mostly service/product keywords - why would they damage that by displaying their own results.
Joe Youngblood
03/21/2013 06:12 pm
If you look at the NCAA case the bracket is fairly bland, just a huge bracket and scores. A few hours after it went live Yahoo! and the NCAA had both purchased ads above the bracket. Neither seem to be there now, and I dont blame them. The fewer organic results display above the fold, the more traffic will click on the one or 2 ads, driving a lot of clicks for Google, but not a lot of value for the advertiser. This could have been done in a much small form factor to accommodate both organic results and the bracket, but Google decided against that it seems. Side note: the bracket at NCAA.com is much better.
DodgyLinks
03/21/2013 08:15 pm
What about them doing credit card comparisons and car insurance? They are doing these here in the UK. Think they are also doing airline tickets.They are encroaching more on SERPs. No sarcasm, it is affecting the livelihoods of webmasters and other businesses. Google can no longer live up to the "Do no evil" moniker, they are now beholden to stakeholders. Everyone working in a high value niche should be worried. Not by direct competitors but by the fact that Google can just waltz in unnanounced and claim your space. So as well as shielding the keywords that end users have typed to end up at our sites from they are also using the data to cotton-pick the richest keywords and put their own services in at the top of the rankings.
sestuff
03/21/2013 11:52 pm
No. I am not being sarcastic. Maybe this isn't as bad as some other things that Google does, but it's an indicator of things to come. Look at the bigger picture. What is happening to Wikipedia is a better example. Google is scraping and displaying information from Wikipedia that took years to put together. What about image search? Google looks down on article scrapers but how are they any better? Pretty soon we will be reading articles from SER and SEL directly on Google. Why bother visiting those websites. As you've indicated, it's just a waste of time to have to click on the result.