Domain diversity update (2010): more results from one site

What Google changed#

On 20 August 2010, Google announced on its Webmaster Central blog “a change to our ranking algorithm that will make it much easier for users to find a large number of results from a single site.” The trigger was the query itself: for queries that “indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain,” Google would show more results from that site.

Google’s example was the query exhibitions at amnh. Before the change, only two results from www.amnh.org would have appeared. After it, seven results from the amnh.org domain appeared, with the last few results still coming from other sites to preserve some diversity.

Google never named the change. The name on this page describes what it did. The SEO industry later called it the Brand update, a name the industry adopted; Moz’s algorithm update history lists it under that label.

When it rolled out#

Google’s post, written by software engineer Samarth Keshava and dated Friday 20 August 2010, said “today we’ve launched” the change. Google gave no rollout period and no completion date. Moz’s history dates it to August 2010 and marks it as unconfirmed, but Google’s own post confirms the change and its date.

What is known about its impact#

Google published no share of queries affected. Its post described the effect only through the amnh.org example and said it expected the change to “help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page.” Any traffic figure attributed to this change comes from third parties, not Google.

What site owners should do#

The behaviour lives on in a system Google still documents. Its ranking systems guide describes a site diversity system that generally shows no more than two listings from the same site in the top results, but “may still show more than two listings in cases where our systems determine it’s especially relevant.” It is not listed among Google’s retired systems.

• Make your site the clear, relevant destination for searches that name it, so Google has reason to show several of your pages.
• Keep a crawlable structure where each section has a distinct page worth listing.
• Treat subdomains as part of your main site: Google’s guide says site diversity generally treats them as part of the root domain.

How to check whether it affected you#

This is historical. Search Console keeps 16 months of data, so August 2010 can only be checked in archived analytics, by comparing branded and navigational Google traffic before and after 20 August 2010. The Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists every update with its dates.

Related updates#

• The Caffeine indexing system launched earlier in 2010.
• The merchant reviews update was the next announced ranking change, in December 2010.