A Triple Listing in Google??

If you only knew... NOT!! Google has nothing to fear from me, LOL.

This was my first website, that I started about 3 1/2 yrs ago when I didn't know what the heck I was doing. It succeeded mostly in spite of my efforts, not because of them.

Hmm, I guess I'll just enjoy my three links while they last...

Yes, I'm not familiar with that term but I suppose that's it. There's one listing at the very top, and then two indented listings below that, all with their respective descriptions. And also indented, below those, is the "More results from..."

Actually the titles of each page are different, so I'm not sure that applies here?

I always log out of any google services when I'm checking on my sites' positions, to decrease the likelihood of the results being skewed by the differences between data centers.

UPDATE: I finally did what I should have done in the first place (duh), and I googled the issue. It turns out that this is something google has been doing since March of this year from what I can tell. But it's possible that it's something they're still experimenting with, since it's still relatively rare.

If I can believe the chatter I read about it, to get a triple listing apparently you need to have 3 pages on your site optimized for the same keyword, and the pages need to be linked together.

But based on the URLs that are listed for my site, that optimization doesn't need to extend to having the same titles on each page, and it doesn't necessarily even require a certain keyword density. For example, let's say my keyword is 'how to clean blue widgets.' The page I actively optimized for that keyword is listed at top, and then below that is a page optimized for 'helpful tips about blue widgets', and below that is a page about 'how to clean other household items.' As you can see, there is some overlap in the titles, and the main keyword does appear at least once on the other pages. But the indented listings are definitely optimized for completely different keywords; however, they are all related to the same subject, and google, in all its algorithmic wisdom, obviously knows this.

I noticed a small but significant increase in traffic on this site in the last 7-10 days, but since I'd been doing other SEO work I can't attribute it to the triple listing (wish I knew when it first appeared). But this is good news, and now I'm motivated to strive for a triple listing for another competitive keyword. I'm sure it helped that my site already had a modest amount of authority in this niche, otherwise I doubt that this is something you could easily accomplish with a new site. BUT, I'm no google expert, so I don't know. Anyway, having three links all grouped together is certainly more noticeable than two, so I've got nothing to lose by trying.

It's true that I did use the same anchor for all three listings, but in varying amounts (going on the theory that you need to mix it up a little). But the anchor text for the two indented listings were definitely weighted to their corresponding primary keywords. As for them being from the same domain source, I didn't do it deliberately, but yes that's true, e.g. web 2.0 sites. I've never heard that before, hmm...

Interestingly, all three of these listings are of inner pages, not the home page, although the home page does appear on the second results page for the keyword in question. However, I have very few anchor text links using this particular keyword going to the home page, so I'm sure that figured into the equation.

No, not even close. And actually I made a mistake when I stated earlier that I created this site 3 1/2 years ago - it was 2 1/2 years ago, I had a major brain fart there (oops, where did that year of my life go??).

But I think it's funny you would mention that, because I guess it points up how rare this is right now. Until it happened to my site I'd never come across it before myself, but now that I know there are other triple listings out there I'll probably see more of them. Kind of like when you buy a new car and then you realize that the roads are full of cars that look exactly like yours, lol.