What Google Search Results Might Look Like Soon

Google's testing search results without URLs. Meaning, instead of seeing website domains, Google Search users may soon only see actual site names on SERP.

For a while now, Google appears to be moving away from showing full URLs in search results. It started with the introduction of Google breadcrumbs a couple of months ago.

Now, a Reddit user noted that the search engine might be looking to do away with URLs from search results altogether.

Google’s corporate mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful to as many people as possible. With this in mind, the search engine giant has made many improvements to enhance users’ experience on its result page.

For example, in January 2014, Google introduced Featured Snippets to reduce the number of clicks necessary to find a piece of information. Also, these snippets improve users’ mobile and voice search experience.

Other past significant changes to Google Search Result Page include:

Introduction of the Knowledge Panel
Related product recommendations
Image search
Extension of the length of titles and descriptions
Introduction of Video Carousel, etc.

Now, Google appears to be testing search results without URLs. So, instead of displaying a full or part of the domain, the search engine will only display the website name.

Naturally, on-lookers are concerned about Google’s current experiment with the search results.

Search Results Without URLs: What It Means

The most significant concern about the potential change is how it threatens security on the search engine.

With users unable to verify the legitimacy of websites in search results, phishing sites can conveniently impersonate trusted businesses. That way, impostors could gain access to sensitive information such as passwords and credit card numbers.

A Reddit user wrote:

“In this era of search results that don’t even show the domain name, how’s Google going to keep phishing sites from using the names of the businesses they’re trying to impersonate?”

On the other hand, removing URLs from search results shouldn’t change much in terms of SEO. If anything, SearchEngineJournal suggests that it could alter the perceived value of exact-match URLs.

With that said, it’s important to note that Google is only just testing. That means the search engine is unlikely to make it permanent if it poses a security threat or harms CTR.