Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I like the new little box. The button is a little ugly though. So many sites have such crappy site searches I've often wished something like this existed.
All it does is append "site:_____" to your query.
I like it.
It has been bouncing in and out around a few datacenters from UK, Germany, and US.
Wikipedia... sure enough it has a search box under the result, but I see no SiteLinks
Interesting. I don't ever remember navigating to the Wikipedia home page by search, so I don't know whether the overall home page ever had Sitelinks. The multi-language home page nav isn't one I'd have thought would be Sitelink-friendly.
Search for [wikipedia english]. Google displays both Sitelinks related to the "Main Page" (in English) and a search box.
-Edit- I finally got to see it on a specific search I did. It certainly is limited to a few domains (e.g. Microsoft). It's a big mystery to me how and why sitelinks appeared for some domains in the first place, and now this search box has appeared.
Thanks for the info.
Anybody have any ideas on what Google will be charging for this new "feature". Where can we sign up?
Another clever way to squeeze more milk out of the cash cow.
My first reaction to change is to wonder what the motive is and a first thought was (oh no.. we're gonna start seeing this search button show up all over the place).. and then they'll start marketing it as an "add-on" to their Adwords (i.e. another few $$ and we'll embed a site search button for you).
Could it be a technique to hold on to the G searcher longer, and maybe have one more chance at showing adwords?
So, the question I guess is how does this embedding of a search box in results evolve? Is this just to improve the search experience? Does it tie into (or relate to) anything else such as custom search or adwords?
I can't see a search box for some of the largest UK retailers either.
[Edit - just found one!]
Turns out that the PR change was cosmetic. No PR shows, but my site still passes juice according to a couple of tests done by some pretty bright people.
So, while I like more traffic, I really don't wish to be beholding to Google for it unless they back off on some of their heavy-handed, control-freak "guidelines" for webmasters.
They have too much control and now have decided which pages to display under my search results (four of them, and only 1 is one that I would have chosen).
Now, if they want to give the webmaster control over what's s displayed, that's another story. Meanwhile, I am very wary of anything they do, per past experiences.
Edit: before anyone asks, I did remove the paid posts from my blog and did a reinclusion request over a month ago. No response.
Doesn't surprise me at all. Sticks out like a sore thumb. 3 search forms on a Google SERP and a site other than Google gets to be one of them. TRUST.
107,000 pages
do we find another site with less then 107 000 pages ... i wanna know what's the limit to get this sitesearch...
Lowest I've seen is 97,900 but I would have thought there's probably more factors determining how you get this search box other than just the amount of indexed pages, such as age of site, authority in it's industry amount of times searched. I'm sure there could be lots of other tangible reasons as well.
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 10:43 pm (utc) on Mar. 7, 2008]
[edit reason] removed specifics [/edit]
I found one under 10K
Without getting into specific search areas, can you characterize this site... eg, high volume local government site, well-known technical site, etc?
I'm assuming that Google would not do this for a 10K page commercial site.
Like massive Adsense accounts, use the Google hardware etc.
There must be more criteria than a large site, or WebmasterWorld would have the "Bonus Box".
It's a privately owned for-profit college network ...so yeah basically it is a "commercial" site blessed with an .edu extension.
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 10:43 pm (utc) on Mar. 7, 2008]
[edit reason] removed specifics [/edit]
I also posted in the Supporters area about the new, smaller Advanced Search interface being shown for google.com to Australian viewers. - I used that to conduct the above search, but google.com.au also displays the search box below sitelinks.
this only seems to be affecting very large or very high traffic sites, and definitely not all of them
Interesting observation . What do you estimate to be high traffic ?
I noticed that 2 out of 5 of our branded sites have just started producing sitelinks, which are our higher traffic sites. So I'm wondering if these gimmicks are released at traffic or interest thresholds.
I'll check with marketing to see if they requested this or had an option to opt in or out of it. Should hopefully be able to update you today.
If you have any questions about our site that you'd think would help you to find out how and why this search box appears, just ask. If I'm able to reply, I will. :)
(Reason for edit: typo)
I can tell you that site search is not placed in the sitelinks by request of the site owner, and it's not placed there simply by a threshold number of indexed urls. For example, one client has 1,100 indexed urls and their sitelinks area does include the site search box; another has 1,700 indexed urls and their sitelinks area does not include a site search box. Also, the presence or absence of the domain itself offering an internal search function does not seem to be a factor.
Some ideas - the site search box may be a traffic metric, or it may include a measurement of how frequently there are query revisions. Those are two guesses that I can't rule out, and they would make some sense.
For example, if your site is called fredblogs dot com and you enter fred blogs [with a space inbetween] - then you may not get site links.
But, if you enter fredblogs [without space] into google, then the chances are that they will appear.
hth
LW
