Google Gives Top Ranking to Single Page Websites?

As you likely know, Google historically has not ranked single pages from single page websites.  It’s believed it’s because Google didn’t believe they gave much of a user experience when arriving at a website that is just a single page.

However, websites have a lot of new dynamics and scripting potentially making a single page website a very good user experience.   The question is, does Google recognize this?

The following was asked of Matt Cutts in a recent blog post…

What does Google think of single-page websites? They are becoming more complex and there are some great websites using only a single page (+lots of CSS and JavaScript) bringing the same user experience as a regular website with many subpages.

Cutts response, ““Google has gotten better at handling javascript, and a lot of the time, if you’re doing some strange or unusual javascript interaction, or pinning some part of the page, or something like that, or having things fold in or fold out, we’re pretty good at being able to process that. In general, I would run a test first.

I wouldn’t bet your SEO legacy on this one single page working well if the javascript or CSS is really obscure or maybe you’ve forgotten and blocked that out in robots.txt. But if you run the test, and you’re pretty happy with it, I don’t necessarily see a problem with that.”

The bottom line seems to be, Cutts believes if you put up a single page site, with tons of content easily navigated through by the visitor, then Google search will recognize this, and rank it appropriately.

Only time will tell.  Are you going to run a test?  Do you believe him?