AbstractOne of the most troublesome problems in resistivity sounding is caused by the spurious effects of near‐surface lateral resistivity variations. It has been found that the effects can be strongly reduced by measuring earth resistances at two electrode array positions such that in one position the lateral effect is a positive contribution to the total measured signal and in the other the contribution is negative. The subsequent combination of the two measurements virtually eliminates the lateral effect.The same technique can also result in a significant reduction in the total number of necessary electrode positions. Consequently the method can be used with a multicore cable system. In this way, in addition to improving the accuracy of the measured results, time and manpower are considerably reduced.Details of the method, examples and comparisons with traditional sounding techniques are give