Google Search Eliminated Indented Results

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:

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:

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:

We stopped doing “indented results” a few weeks ago, and it’s unrelated to the core update. Especially with continuous scroll, it wasn’t as helpful as in the past. Our site diversity system still works to generally show only two results from the same site in the top results,…

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) October 12, 2023

Oh, just don’t confuse indented results with sitelinks – these are sitelinks. Danny Sullivan added “site links like those have not changed.”

Update: I think I found some of those tweets:

SERP Update: Google has now completely removed indented results from Search. I posted about a decrease in August, with Google looking to have doubled-down on the change. If multiple results now appear for a domain, they are no longer grouped together. pic.twitter.com/hbkZfTjLn9

— SERP Alert (@SERPalerts) October 6, 2023

Hmm, @dr_pete might be right here -> Between Aug 17-19, the percentage of page-one Google SERPs with indented results in the MozCast 10K tracking set dropped from 24.10% to 12.04%. See trending below of indented results when checking some top sites: https://t.co/kuzsl6enYN pic.twitter.com/baTpsLRybJ

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 5, 2023

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.