What to Do When Your Website Ends Up in Google’s Omitted Results

Did you know that Google doesn’t show all your pages in the search results, even though they have the potential to rank high? Yeah, that’s right! Your page is eligible to rank high, but doesn’t get displayed in the searches.

These are called omitted results and, although they aren’t something to freak out about, they can sometimes become a little bit of a pain. If your website is listed in Google’s omitted results, almost nobody will ever see it. Fortunately, there are some things you can do in order to get it out of there.

What Are Omitted Results?

Omitted results are search results that are excluded from Google’s search pages in order to provide a better user experience.

These results usually provide information that is very similar to the information in another result that has already been displayed. They could be classified as duplicate content, but not necessarily.

They could also be classified as a defense mechanism against people trying to abuse the system and rank multiple pages on the same keyword. This technique would be a sort of reverse doorway pages, since doorway pages usually try to rank for multiple, different keywords.

To see omitted results you have to click until the last page of Google (for that particular query). This will basically tell Google ‘I haven’t found what I was searching for’ and Google will provide you with the omitted results message:

If you decide to repeat the search with the omitted results included, Google will display the first results page again, but this time you will be able to find some extra websites/pages around there.

There are two common scenarios where results might be omitted:

Omitted Results for Domains That Are Already Ranking

These are the kind of omitted results you probably worry less about. They occur when you have multiple pages addressing the same topic. Let’s say you have 3 forum pages about Tesla’s new Falcon Heavy rocket. They all pretty much cover the same topic, but have been posted by 3 different users. Google will basically have to choose which page is best, display that and omit the rest.

This doesn’t sound too bad, as you’re already ranking with one page at the top. However, the problem becomes a little bit more serious when you have thousands of pages all competing for the same keywords. If the number of pages competing for the same keyword starts getting really big, then Google might have trouble deciding what to show.

Omitted Results for Domains That Are Not Already Ranking

This is the true reason why this question actually pops up: You build a website or a page, only to find that your website only shows up in the omitted results. Well, it might just be that your content is either very similar to the other ones that are already ranking, or that it doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

Why Does Google Omit Results from the Search?

Google omits results in order to provide the user with the best possible experience. Everything started with a lot of users complaining about Google pages returning a lot of results from the same domains, making the search experience a pretty bad one.

In the end, it seems like the more pages you rank on a search query with the same domain, the harder it gets for another page from the same domain to rank on that query.

The Right Way to Make Omitted Results Reappear in the Search

First of all, consider that there are multiple ways your data can get unlisted from Google. Make sure this is not an indexation issue, by checking if your page is indexed. You can perform a Fetch and Render from the Google Search Console to tell Google to index your page.

1. Check Your Website’s Architecture

Your site’s architecture might lead to duplicate content issues, which will eventually force Google to omit search results from your website.

2. Improve Your Content and OnPage SEO

This is especially important if you’re not ranking with another page. It means that Google might think you’re just a copy-cat of already existing content.

3. 301 redirects or rel=”canonical” meta tags

If you have a lot of pages that don’t provide much value to the website and you simply don’t need them anymore, you can 301 those to the most relevant locations.

4. Multiple Locations/Languages

Make sure you properly add the hreflang meta tag. The hreflang meta tag will tell Google which page to show in which region.

How NOT to Fix Omitted Results

Deleting omitted results from your website isn’t a very good idea. Instead, use the method posted above and merge your content into a single more relevant piece by using 301 redirect or the rel=”canonical” meta tag.

Conclusion

Omitted results aren’t always something to freak out about, but they can indicate a growing issue on your website. You should deal with it as soon as possible by improving the quality of your content and making sure that you don’t write about the same topic over and over again.