Google Officially Stops Indented Results: A Game Changer in Search

Google’s latest move has sent shockwaves through the search engine landscape; they’ve officially stopped ‘INDENTED RESULTS.’ This change marks a significant departure from Google’s decade-old tradition of showcasing results. Instead of indenting the result under the main result, Google will just list the result that it would have indented in the main results.

This move has come amidst a period of remarkable volatility in Google’s search results following a series of substantial updates to Google’s algorithm, recently followed by the removal of FAQ and how-to rich results.

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, officially confirmed the removal of indented search results as a core SERP feature. He 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.Google has been intending search results on and off since at least 2009.

To understand the significance of this transition, let’s take a look at what the indented results used to look like just a few months ago:

Image: Search Engine Land

Now you can see them listed out, without being indented and not in a specific order:

According to Google, the “diversity system still works to generally show only two results from the same site in the top results.” So Google has not changed how often the same domain may appear on the same search results page for a single query. Simply said, Google will no longer intend the result.

As per Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land, this change shouldn’t impact how many times your content is shown in Google Search. Instead, it will impact the way that second listing appears in those search results.

The big question is, will this affect your click-through rate for better or for worse? We’re still waiting to find out.

What is ‘Intended Results?’

‘Indented Results,’ a SERP feature introduced by Google in September 2021, has bid farewell to the search landscape. Fast forward to September 2023, and this feature has now been officially removed from Google’s search results. Yes, you read that right – it’s gone!

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