<b>SERP teardown: is Google deliberately diversifying domains in the top 10?</b>

<b>SERP teardown: is Google deliberately diversifying domains in the top 10?</b>

You rarely see one site own 5 of the top 10 anymore. Is there an observable host-crowding limit?

— Across 60 queries I counted how many top-10 slots any single domain held.
— A single domain held more than 2 organic slots in only a small minority of SERPs; 1-2 was the overwhelming norm.
— On queries where one domain <i>did</i> hold 3+, it was usually a dominant brand or a query with sparse supply.

The nuance: this is consistent with host-crowding controls Google has discussed, capping per-domain presence to diversify results. For authority-site strategy, the implication is that beyond a point, adding the Nth competing page on the same topic cannibalizes rather than stacks, you're capped by the SERP's diversity budget, not your content volume.

Caveat: "sparse supply" queries are subjective; personalization and SERP features also shift counts.

Method note: manual slot-counting, 60 queries, logged-out US desktop.

Confidence: medium