Bug: Google Drops Small Sitelinks From Search Snipperts

Nov 8, 2016 - 7:58 am 4 by

Desktop2 1900px WIDE

Google seems to have significantly dropped the number of sitelinks that show up in the search results under the snippets from around 35% of all queries that show sitelinks to about 8.5% of all queries that show sitelinks. That is according to the RankRanger SERP features tool.

Update: This was a bug, Google is fixing the issue.

Google Sitelinks Drop

It seems that Google has removed specifically the smaller sitelinks and not the larger sitelinks that you see for more navigational or brand queries.

For example, this query showed Sitelinks about a year ago and now they do not:

Before:

Google Sitelinks Line 1441972364

After:

Google Small Sitelinks Gone

But they do come up for the larger sitelinks:

Google Sitelinks

I did email Google last night asking what is up. First the knowledge graph snippets go missing and now this. I am thinking these are bugs but I will report back when I hear back.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

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