Google Drops Host Groups From Visual Elements Gallery Since Indented Results Are Gone

Last week, we learned that Google officially dropped indented results from its search results interface. With that Google, on Friday, removed the "Host group" section from its visual elements gallery help document.

Here is what that section said, via the Wayback Machine:

"A host group is two or more consecutive text results from the same site that are grouped together because they are ranking for the same query.

The best practices for text results still apply here, as these are just two text results grouped together. Consider if you want people going to one of these pages instead of the other, and setting that one as the canonical."

Here is a screenshot:

Google noted this change saying that on October 13, "Removed the host group visual element from the from Visual Elements gallery, as it no longer appears in Google Search results."

I believe Lino spotted this change prior to Google documenting it:

Google removed the 'Host group' documentation, perhaps related to 'Stops Indenting Results'? It's still available in Spanish, guess there's a silver lining to being behind on documentation updates!

English version https://t.co/ph0WkCOGUh

Spanish versionhttps://t.co/0Fh8FrwMeh https://t.co/qnGJbR4A07 pic.twitter.com/lxNXR7wNn5

— Lino Uruñuela (@Errioxa) October 13, 2023

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