How does Google assign the additional links.

Thoughts and speculation welcome.

[Vimes]

Hi All,

Ok we’ve all seen them and some of us have a few of them but how does Google assign the additional links under the "authority" websites that sit at Number one.

I’ve been checking on the sites that I have with these and the sites my competitors have with these. I’m still not seeing any rhyme or reason to how / what they will show.
So once you qualify for these links to be added which links get placed. I read that it’s a random decision but I just can’t believe they would leave it to sticking a pin into the code and pulling the closest anchor text it finds and then publishes it.

Come on you lot, I’m sure some of you out there must have some solid conclusions on this.

Vimes.

[SniperRyan]

My company has these sublinks in our SERPs for a 3-word keyphrase. As far as I can tell, Google didn't pick them based on traffic through the link or place on the page.

2 are unpopular, one is at the top, the other at the bottom. Of the other two, one gets quite a bit of traffic and is mid page, the other gets a small amount of traffic and is at the very bottom right hand corner.

My closest guess is that Google's algo. pulled the links which had the most actionable anchor text, e.g. 'Contact' 'Open' 'Management' etc.

That is the only similarity I could trace, though.

[lammert]

For my website the additional links have all anchor texts pulled from pages on my own site. Some are so unnatural that no other site would link with that anchor text, so I am quite sure it was automatically picked from the site with an algo. For example one of my sub-links is called "explanation" in the SERPs. This is a very unnatural anchor text for other sites to use, but I have used it several times throughout my site.

Unfortunately for that specific #1 listing the "explanation" link is pointing to a page that is no explanation of the #1 listing but of some other subject :(

[Kufu]

Matt Cutts commented on this very topic.

"And the answer is: it’s all algorithmic. The algorithms pick the sites where this could be helpful. Of course money isn’t involved at all."

A bit vague, but it is at least something.

[Vimes]

Hi,

Precisely its algorithmic, so has anyone any thoughts on this algo my links are all anchor text links from my page but I’d like others to be place there better keyword “selling terms” if you will. Some folks must have some conclusions.

I at first thought it was the first links in the code that the bot came across but from the selection of pages that have these showing that isn’t the case with my pages.

Any thoughts welcome.

Vimes.