Google Search Stops Indenting Results

Oct 13, 2023 - 7:21 am 3 by

Google Indented Logo

Google has stopped the indented results, something Google has been doing for well over a decade. Instead, Google will just list out the result it would have indented in the main results and not indent it under that main result.

Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison, confirmed this on X saying, "We stopped doing "indented results" a few weeks ago." He said this is "unrelated to the core update" and it was removed a couple of weeks prior to when Google started that core update.

Someone on Twitter notified me of this, but when I tested it, I saw the indented results, so I moved on. I guess that person (I can't find that tweet now, sorry) was noticing it as it was rolling out and I missed it.

Here is what the indented results looked like a few months ago:

Google Indented Results Example

Now when I search for that set of results, I see the indented results were removed and it showed a secondary listing a couple of listings down:

Google Indented Results Not

Danny Sullivan said it was removed because it "wasn't as helpful as in the past" since Google added continuous scroll.

He added that there as no change to the site diversity system, saying, "Our site diversity system still works to generally show only two results from the same site in the top results, though -- as has long been the case -- that can vary based on the nature of the query." As a reminder, in 2019, Google restricted the same domain to on average two results per search results page, but that is not always the case.

Here is the post on X:

Oh, just don't confuse indented results with sitelinks - these are sitelinks. Danny Sullivan added "site links like those have not changed."

click for full size

Update: I think I found some of those tweets:

With this, Google removed the host group visual element from the from Visual Elements gallery, as it no longer appears in Google Search results.

Forum discussion at X.

 

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