Google Sitelinks Keep Getting Bigger: Good or Bad?

Aug 17, 2011 - 9:08 am 6 by
Filed Under Google

Google finally announced the mega, huge and jumbo sitelinks we have seen them testing for months.

Let me take you through the history of Sitelinks, even before they were named sitelinks.

In July 2005, Google had this format:

click for full size

Then a month later, it looked more like this:

click for full size

Here is one from 2006:

click for full size

Then can other forms, I'll skip some, but here are the anchor based sitelinks:

click for full size

Then also the two column view:

click for full size

Heck, even AdWords sitelinks:

click for full size

But now the Jumbo sitelinks are here:

click for full size

The algorithm has changed for how Google handles this, they will show up to twelve results plus likely show less indented results for the same domain. Is this a good thing for online reputation management?

In addition, we're making a significant improvement to our algorithms by combining sitelink ranking with regular result ranking to yield a higher-quality list of links. This reduces link duplication and creates a better organized search results page. Now, all results from the top-ranked site will be nested within the first result as sitelinks, and all results from other sites will appear below them. The number of sitelinks will also vary based on your query—for example, [museum of art nyc] shows more sitelinks than [the met] because we're more certain you want results from www.metmuseum.org.

For more of our coverage on Google Sitelinks see our Google Sitelinks category.

What are your thoughts?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Google Blogoscoped Forums, DigitalPoint Forums and Cre8asite Forums.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Follow

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google Updates

Google March 2024 Core Update Finished April 19th (A Week Ago)

Apr 26, 2024 - 4:40 pm
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: April 26, 2024

Apr 26, 2024 - 4:00 pm
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Core Update Updates, Site Reputation Abuse Coming, Links, Ads & More

Apr 26, 2024 - 8:01 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Publisher Center No Longer Allows Adding Publications

Apr 26, 2024 - 7:51 am
Google

Google Tests Placing The Snippet Date Next To URL

Apr 26, 2024 - 7:41 am
Google

Google Breaks Out Googlebot IP Ranges For User-Triggered Fetchers

Apr 26, 2024 - 7:31 am
Previous Story: Bowling At Google - No, Not Search Results