Receptional Andy
msg:3694798 | 8:19 pm on Jul 9, 2008 (gmt 0) |
I've not seen any direct connection between ranking and sitelinks (blocked or otherwise) although sitelinks do give a good overview of how Google understands site structure. I would suggest that sitelinks are an effect, rather than a cause: site problems (especially structural or hierarchical ones) can be made more visible via sitelinks, but I don't think sitelinks themselves have any potential to cause ranking problems. I would expect the impact of removing a sitelink on ranking to be nothing, aside from whatever changes occur to clickthrough rate as a result of the missing link or whatever replaced it.
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trinorthlighting
msg:3694812 | 8:35 pm on Jul 9, 2008 (gmt 0) |
It was weird, when I saw the change (Which was all in one day), I started monitoring the serps for the example keywords "widgets that are green" and "are green" A few days later, we fell 200 spots for "widgets that are green" and jumped to the top 400 spots for "are green" I know Google dynamically gathers these words and site links, but something is a bit screwy with this. So I did block it in my webmaster tools to see what happens. The real odd thing about this is the date: June 26th. I wonder if Google made a change to the dynamic algo and Google is not properly classifying web pages now. Might explain some of the recent drastic drops for some people. Fortunately, “Widgets that are green” is not really a big search term for us.
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netmeg
msg:3694821 | 8:43 pm on Jul 9, 2008 (gmt 0) |
On a client site, we blocked a sitelink that was to some really silly page for them to sitelink to - can't even remember what it was, like privacy policy or returns page - and suffered no ill effects that I could tell. It does look like they've done some updating recently - they just this past weekend added a sitelink to the most important event on my events site. Too bad the event was over two weeks ago. Be interesting to see if the link disappears now, since people won't be searching for it again until next year.
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trinorthlighting
msg:3694826 | 8:48 pm on Jul 9, 2008 (gmt 0) |
Interesting thing is that most sites have 6-8 site links. We have always had 8. I blocked two today that are still showing up in search though. I wonder what and when Google will relpace it with.
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Receptional Andy
msg:3694829 | 8:50 pm on Jul 9, 2008 (gmt 0) |
| A few days later, we fell 200 spots for "widgets that are green" and jumped to the top 400 spots for "are green" |
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This may be because of the two aspects sharing a data source, but updating at different times: co-occurrence rather than cause and effect.
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trinorthlighting
msg:3694836 | 9:00 pm on Jul 9, 2008 (gmt 0) |
I agree about the data, the home page did not change though so that tells me Google made an algo change on their end. This does show that the mechanism that is related to site links does have an effect on the serps. I am going to see what happens when Google does replace the site links and makes changes and see what happens in the serps.
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Receptional Andy
msg:3694845 | 9:09 pm on Jul 9, 2008 (gmt 0) |
| the mechanism that is related to site links does have an effect on the serps |
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Personally, I would rephrase that to "the mechanism that is related to the serps does have an effect on site links" based on the effects you've reported. Serps create sitelinks, sitelinks don't create serps. Of course, there's an element of 'feedback', in that Google can look at how people utilise sitelinks, and so the relationship is not entirely that simple.
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trinorthlighting
msg:3694969 | 12:20 am on Jul 10, 2008 (gmt 0) |
Agreed, it will be interesting to see how quickly google drops off the site links and how they get replaced.
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tedster
msg:3695062 | 2:30 am on Jul 10, 2008 (gmt 0) |
I've had two experiences with blocking a Google-chosen Sitelink for a client. In both cases the Sitelink was quickly dropped, but not replaced. It's now approaching a full year.
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narrowboater
msg:3697445 | 10:33 am on Jul 13, 2008 (gmt 0) |
In our case, Google gave us a bunch of sitelinks (great) but then gave them goofy names which were strange edits of the pages' title tags (not so great). A few weeks ago I edited the title tags so that they were short enough to be used as sitelinks in their entirety, and would also make more sense to Google users. I know that the pages have been re-crawled and cached, but it hasn't made any difference to the sitelinks. They seem to be 'stuck'.
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BillyS
msg:3697458 | 11:58 am on Jul 13, 2008 (gmt 0) |
I removed two Site Links, they were never replaced.
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g1smd
msg:3697511 | 4:24 pm on Jul 13, 2008 (gmt 0) |
I feel left out. I have yet to directly work on a site that has sitelinks.
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Asia_Expat
msg:3697536 | 5:20 pm on Jul 13, 2008 (gmt 0) |
I did once block a site link because it was a deleted forum thread that was returning a '410 Gone' header... the link WAS replaced and I've seen several shuffles since... I'm currently showing seven sitelinks that I'm happy with.
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Miamacs
msg:3697885 | 11:25 am on Jul 14, 2008 (gmt 0) |
I have enough data now to believe that Google is increasingly using traffic and user behavior as factors for many things ( including for rankings, and no bounce rates are not a part of the picture ). Sitelinks are the most often visited pages of a website.
URLs Google estimates to be the most frequented.
This is the only valid co-relation from where I see it. Number of unique visits seem to be the key even if the URL itself is not the most popular landing page or does not even act as an entry point. Sitelinks aren't really related to keyword targeting in this regard.
But usability is a part of SEO and sitelinks are a mirror image of that. "Users know this site. Now let's see, where were they likely to visit nearly always? Let's give them these links up front and score points for making their lives easier." As for link text generation, I'd say they simply exclude obvious phrases that are already present elsewhere in the listing. It'd make sense in most cases not to list 'widgets' 8 times when everyone knows the site is about widgets. Looks rather stupid though, especially where the removed keyword was part of an actual name ( place, product, service... ). ... Needless to say their estimates are sometimes off ( as they can't use Analytics data unless you let them, even if they have the stats of your domain ). For less popular / regional sites, or sites with seasonal trends this method sometimes multiplies a data sample that was way too small, and the domain ends up with 4 out of 8 links being a snapshot of a day's ( hour's ) worth of trends. Rarely saw this problem with sites that have a large volume of visits, evened out. ... 'Blocking' is likely to disable the *display* of either URLs in the top 8. Unless that tips the balance and another URL pushes the ( now blocked ) page out of the top 8, I don't think they'll just go on and show #9 or #10, 11... etc. Say, why would they have any extras calculated? But they do refresh the list at least once or twice a year. [edited by: Miamacs at 11:40 am (utc) on July 14, 2008]
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Green_Grass
msg:3697905 | 12:16 pm on Jul 14, 2008 (gmt 0) |
Never blocked them. I am grateful for what I have ;-) Interesting thread. I must say, I am a little surprised to see webmasters blocking valid site links..
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trinorthlighting
msg:3698001 | 2:51 pm on Jul 14, 2008 (gmt 0) |
Google still has not shown a change, one of the links we did block was a 404 page and it is gone for good. I will keep you updated.
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crobb305
msg:3698849 | 1:46 pm on Jul 15, 2008 (gmt 0) |
| Google gave the site link as "Are Green" |
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I have noticed this too, that the link titles are sometimes truncated. Not sure why, and it doesn't always happen.
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trinorthlighting
msg:3701601 | 12:39 pm on Jul 18, 2008 (gmt 0) |
Today the blocked link was dropped. It has not been replaced though.
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netmeg
msg:3707117 | 10:24 am on Jul 25, 2008 (gmt 0) |
Is this new, or did I just never notice it before? Today when I went into my GWT account and took a look at the Sitelinks for one of my sites, it now lists a date next to the Current Sitelinks - "Last updated Jul 23, 2008" That's a GREAT addition! I was wondering that very thing, how often they get updated, and now I will know.
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trinorthlighting
msg:3707162 | 11:57 am on Jul 25, 2008 (gmt 0) |
Yes, I noticed this as well. I only have 7 site links showing, the one I blocked is a 404 page. I am in the process of removing that page through the webmasterpanel right now. Once google kills the page I am thinking about unblocking the site link to see what happens.
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drewshiel
msg:3707194 | 12:55 pm on Jul 25, 2008 (gmt 0) |
| Never blocked them. I am grateful for what I have ;-) Interesting thread. I must say, I am a little surprised to see webmasters blocking valid site links.. |
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I've only ever blocked one, which was to a "My Account"-type page; one that's utterly useless to a user that's not logged in, as the main message on it says "You're not logged in". It hasn't been replaced with anything else, but it's only been about three months. There was a brief period after I blocked it, where the sitelinks on that site vanished entirely, and a period following it where I could see them in the SERPs, but not in GWT, and now they've settled back to being stable.
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trinorthlighting
msg:3708965 | 5:16 am on Jul 28, 2008 (gmt 0) |
The 404 page was removed from google through the webmaster tools, when I logged back into site links, it was still showing as blocked even though it has been a 404 page that was removed. I have already unblocked the url and I am going to wait and see what happens.
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