Is Google at it again – Split testing their SERPs

It’s a normal day at the office.. 2 screens stare me in the face, ear buds jamming, the smell of light butter popcorn fills the air, and I’m searching on Google for jQuery tutorials WHEN ALL OF A SUDDEN I see this:

Looks like the results page has change! – The main difference is the left sidebar is moved to a horizontal navigation above the search results.

Naturally, I did the same query in my ‘logged in’ browser and voila! The SERP is different:

My inclination says the SERPs vary based on whether you’re logged into your Google account or not.. but I’m not 100% sure..

Either way, you can imagine how surprised I was to see Google split testing their search engine results pages (SERPs), again.

Yeah, I wasn’t surprised at all.. this is at least a quarterly thing for Google.

At the end of the day, the results aren’t all that different.. this guide will show you why.

What does this mean? –  Google has so much data that they can easily split test the search engine result pages in an effort to make them more efficient.

Why do I care? – Simple: Google is in the “quality information” business.. and their goal is to provide said information in the most effective manner possible.

SO when YOU provide Google with quality information on your website, and make it easily accessiable for them to index it.. Your website will climb higher in the SERPs 🙂

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304459804577281842851136290.html