I've been seeing differing results layouts in Google for a while now and I'm pretty sure I already know the answer why, but I just want to see if anyone has any additional insights.
Example of what I'm referring to -
When you search for "sports illustrated" the results are diplayed in the normal, tiered fashion:
SI.com - News and Scores from Sports Illustrated
Sports news from Cable News Network(CNN) and Sports Illustrated Magazine.
www.cnnsi.com/ - 45k - Oct 30, 2005 - Cached - Similar pages
(indented) SI.com - MLB - 2005 Postseason
(indented) SI.com - News and Scores from Sports Illustrated ... Copyright © 2005 CNN/Sports
(indented) Illustrated. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. ...
(indented) www.cnnsi.com/baseball/mlb/ - 36k - Oct 30, 2005 - Cached - Similar pages
However, when you search for "espn" you are given a much more compact results listing, with links to other portions of the site listed below:
ESPN.com Information about all college and professional sports.
espn.go.com/ - 74k - Oct 30, 2005 - Cached - Similar pages
MLB -
Scoreboard -
Baseball -
Fantasy -
NBA
More results from espn.go.com »
Is this just Google testing out different layout schemes to see which users respond to? Or is there something more to this?