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I've seen a site have double listings for a single keyword.

I'm getting four of ten, and it's all from the exact same page and keyword.(Even headline)

It's not duplicate listings though.

Even though it is the same page and ranking for the same keyword the listings are all showing different portions of the same page in the description.

Google is basically indexing each paragraph on the page as a new listing, and giving them the same headline, but having unique descriptions showing.

This is for a brand new site and domain. I set the page up in a way I've never done before but am not sure why Google is reading it this way.

My site is only partially indexed at this point, so maybe the listings will disappear on the next update? Anyone have an idea of what is going on?


Aaron
#search engine optimization #google #listings #quadruple #sites
  • Hi Aaron,

    That sounds interesting. Are the URLs identical? Are you using URL parameters? Are you using 302 Temporary redirects?

    My guess would be that it is some sort of canonicalization issue.
  • Google does indeed pick what it thinks is the most RELEVANT description depending what the user is searching in Google. You cannot "force" Google to take a certain text to display in the listing - in fact, META descriptions are actually being ignored.

    So what you see is actually normal.

    One example would be one and the same, identical blog post which has a variety of keywords in it, for example using tags which contain long tail KWs.

    The post might rank for its main keyword with whatever description Google pulls, but it might ALSO rank for another keyword, but then displaying the part with the other keyword highlighted i the listing. Eg. sometimes it could rank because it has a KW in the post tags, and the listing only shows "Headline - tagged as [keyword], [keyword]..." etc.

    Addendum:

    This is actually important to know since one posting/article CAN and DOES indeed rank for many different keywords. (While the main keyword of course is usually the one with the highest ranking since the article might not be optimized for the additional keywords). But it shows how useful it is to use related keywords ..and NOT only look at one single keyword and ignore zillions of other keywords which can bring traffic.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
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    • Hi GeorgR,

      I agree that part of what he said is normal, however I thought his point was that the same page was listed multiple times on the same SERP with the only difference being different text snippets for the descriptions. That is definitely not normal.
      • [1] reply
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    I've seen a site have double listings for a single keyword. I'm getting four of ten, and it's all from the exact same page and keyword.(Even headline)