Is there still room on Google's SERPs?
Una research by The Markup (here the results on GitHub) instils a doubt that has long since taken hold: on the SERPs there is no more space and this is because Google, little by little, has increased the share of results advocated and compressed spaces containing links to the outside.
How Google has changed
The analysis of The Markup does not reveal any particular innovations, but has the merit of clearly lining up this that has happened in the past 15 years. In fact, what was the "10 blue links" page today is something very different: between advertising in evidence, direct, related answers and "knowledge panels", the research measures in 41% the quantity of mobile page that Google reserve for yourself. The consequence is completely clear: the user will tend to stay on Google instead of going to another site.This has two very serious direct effects: on the one hand there is an extreme compression of advertising revenue ( and not only) that a third group is able to collect; on the other, there is a multiplication of Google's revenue, with an "x 5" factor identifiable as the best motivation for the group's strategic choices.
Often, as happened in the interaction between Google and the world of the news from Mountain View is observed as anyone who has the power of the opt-out, being able to safely give up to offer their information to the engine. This, however, is clearly not a viable way, because it means to give up the share of the trade obtained: give up Google means exit from the market (Google holds today, 95% of the searches mobile at the global level, leaving only crumbs to the competition). On this clutch are born in time and the first trials of antitrust, from which Google is however, right here come out basically unscathed.
The report of The Markup also includes the statement made by the official spokesperson Lara Levin, according to which the search would be fallacious , since to base the survey on selected queries from Google Trends increases the possibility of results stuffed placements Google then getting a photograph is not realistic of the actual situation (justification in suitable part, in part, undermined by the same bias is the opposite: it makes more sense to analyze the SERP the most dense of traffic, and not the residual). Moreover, the results offered on the SERP would be compiled on the basis of accurate assessments of reliability. Then, if the speech goes to the words of Larry Page, who in 2004 argued for a virtuous approach to an engine that distributes traffic, Levin reminds us how the world has meanwhile changed. As blame her, for the rest.
41% less space
The issue is likely to remain open. Google, like Facebook and every other platform, naturally tends to keep to himself the time of the users , because the time has no cash value and is a value. The free movement of the view is not a proper value of the Internet these years, while he was in an age less ripe for the Web. From most parts it is known as the loss of that naivety of the fund has changed a lot the profile of the Network, but there is also those who would like to, at least in part, to recover the best features. The ball is largely in the hands of the institutions of antitrust, which reason, however, in terms that are not exactly their of the active policy proposals in search of business models that create real synergies and partnerships between the motor and external companies. That which is not of the one, is the other. And both parties try to keep to themselves what they can earn.The investigation of The Markup has the advantage of taking pictures of this situation, recalling with each company such as the composition of the business plan should also deal with these dynamics. The visibility is neither obvious nor a mathematical process in the hands of alchemy SEO: the space on the SERP that count is reduced a lot, therefore, to differentiate the sources and to improve its contents, is the least that can be done within a strategy that should be more and more conscious, varied, rich, and fruitful. Where there was 100% space, today there is the middle; where there was just a part of the public, however, now it is almost everything. The institutions will think that that is antitrust, the market will take care of the rest.
Source: The Markup
