they're testing - i was searching for a variety of colours of widgets that a client sells yesterday as one of my KPI's this year is to nail that low hanging longer tail stuff. For some searches I would have 8 or 9 results from us, then the same number from a competitor, then 3 from another competitor, then 7 from another etc. For others normal serps. The guy next to me was seeing normal serps throughout.
Obviously I like when we dominate the first page (less good where we don't yet rank #1!) but its really not a good experience for the average searcher. If you're researching red widgets then you only want one or two results per domain and you'll look at the others when you click through, surely. Very strange thing to even be testing, imho.
of course. all red widget sellers who rank below #1 will be needing ppc if that comes in...... and once product goes fully paid, we're down to 1 organic result on page 1, let alone above the fold......
