Last week we updated you about Google’s most recent modification to the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Their ‘brand suggestions’ has potentially played into the hands of big brand owners, and increased their share of 2nd and 3rd searches.

Power to the Smaller Player

To give some power back to the smaller competitor, Google have now introduced a ‘similar’ link, at the bottom of the search results.

This is a block of similar sites published at the bottom of the results pages. These link to new websites that Google thinks are similar to the ones that you usually click on. If you click on the ‘pages similar to’ link near the top of the block, you get a full list of similar pages.

Discovering Variety

Google say that this will make it easier for users “to discover the variety of choices available on the web”.

This is what it looks like:

similar pages

In contrast to ‘brand suggestions’ release, this may help people navigate to less well known websites and brands that are considered similar by Google.

Some Winners… and some losers

If you have a small brand that competes against some large players, you may find that you are getting traffic from this ‘pages similar to’ box.

The flip side of course is that Google is going to be suggesting alternatives to all the big brands. When your own website appears in the SERPs, the last thing you want is for Google to suggest a list of alternatives or competitors.

What about you?

Have you experienced the upside or downside to either of these developments? Leave us a comment below.