Google sitelinks, what are they?

Have you ever done a search on Google and seen that the top result has several links to pages within the site? These are called sitelinks, and as you can imagine, are very nice to have, as it gives you the top 5 or 6 results on a page. If you aren’t sure exactly what I am talking about, then look at this image:

So how do they work? Who decides what URLs show up? I think that the first port of call should be Google themselves. Right have you read that?

• Here are a couple of things about sitelinks that you should take into consideration:
• They are generated automatically.
• You cannot make Google show them.
• They only show up for some keywords.
• You can guide Google towards linking to certain pages.

I think that I should explain the last one, as it isn’t as obvious as the rest. If you structure your page right, you can make it easier for Google to pick out the main links on the page. For example, for a long time our site links didn’t contain a link to SEO Tools. However, we changed the main links on our site and added SEO Tools. After a while, it added SEO Tools to the sitelinks. As with many things in SEO, it is very much common sense. If you have links that are getting added to the sitelinks, look at how they are displayed and coded on your site and then replicate that to add another link. If the link is relevant, then Google could well update the sitelinks and add the new link.

Yesterday, Google rolled out an added feature to their Webmaster tools which allows you to request to have links removed from the site links if they appear under your site for any keyword. Why you would want to do this I am not entirely sure, but there you go, I am sure there are many reasons, I just haven’t come across them.

James
SEO Programmer