Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I have noticed this on google.co.uk
They appear as a three or four sitelinks in one horisontal line, just above the green URL. Interestingly, they do not necessary appear for listing in position #1, I have seen a site on a position #3 with these, whereas the first two positions in SERPS had none.
These links do not appear on the same search on Google.com and I've done the search on a clean browser (happens to be Opera) with no cookies or cache and have the same result.
I can also report that the 3 links shown are the first 3 on my Site Links on Webmaster tools.
They also appear for a 3 word term that we appear at #1, but for another related 2 word term that we are #1 they do not appear.
Cheers
Sid
Even the #2 that I use to have is now gone....
Further, these are the top 4 (left side) vertical links that are now showing as horizontal
[edited by: AnkitMaheshwari at 6:10 am (utc) on April 6, 2009]
[edited by: tedster at 7:04 pm (utc) on April 6, 2009]
I'm hypothesising that this is an "authority site" feature for significant terms. So far I have not seen inner pages with this feature.
I have a number of 2 and 3 word terms that we rank #1 or #2 for but only those where my home page is the ranking page and where the "related searches" appears at the top of the serps pages results in a listing with mini site links.
Has anyone seen inner pages with them?
Has anyone seen them on serps that don't have "related searches appearing above th organic results?
Cheers
Sid
What would be your method for tracking their use?
Quite simple; compare the search query to the entry page.
And just imagine I am completely stupid...
How would that be accurate? Your SERPS positions change all the time.
Do you mean that if they type in the "name of your company" then they don't click on the site links?
That's a reletively reasonable way of measuring it - but for generic keywords I can't imagine how your could accurantely track this.
eg.
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.example.com/directory-example/&ei=8RvbSbeyJYXSjAeVvZi-CA&sa=X&oi=oneline_sitelinks&resnum=6&ct=result&cd=2&usg=AFQjCNHqLWF-IAxqrWbQQuP0grxC8sXTVA
so can quite easily be tracked in most analytics tools.
Clearly Google is keen to record CTR of site links but I am not sure if this tracking code is in use all of the time on mini site links as it come and goes on traditional site links
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 4:59 pm (utc) on April 7, 2009]
[edit reason] de-activated sample referrer link [/edit]
That's a reletively reasonable way of measuring it - but for generic keywords I can't imagine how your could accurantely track this.
Well I know you need to do a lot of manual log walking, but at least you ca get a ballpark figure. I don;t see how changing position in the SERPS would really matter; if someone searches for 'computers' and he clicks on 'keyboards', does it matter for your stats whether you're listed #1 or #30? The query is 'computers', but the entry page is 'keyboards'.
I was in a leading position for a very popular keyword untill these mini links appeared.
I am of the opinion that something happened a short while before these things started to appear. For months now we have retained our #1 slot on google.co.uk but were #2 on google.com. Just (perhpas a day or 2) before mini sitelinks appeared on .co.uk we dropped to #2. I saw other signs that made me jump to the conclusion that they had turned off the .co.uk filter but there may have been some other algorithmic reason for the change.
Anyway the point is that your drop in traffic may be an unfortunate side effect of other coincidental changes that have taken place along with the mini site links thing.
With any luck they will put back the .co.uk filter and we will get our positions back with the added benefit of the extra links.
Cheers
Sid
One-line sitelinks [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com]
...We're now launching an expansion of sitelinks: a single row of links can now appear for results that didn't show sitelinks before, even for results that aren't in the first position.......For webmasters, this new feature means it's possible that your site will start showing sitelinks for a number of queries where it previously didn't. We expect this will increase the visibility of and traffic to your site, while also improving the experience of users....
The blog post goes on to discuss that if you don't want a particular page to show up, "you can always block a page from appearing as a sitelink for 90 days through Webmaster Tools."
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 1:54 am (utc) on April 17, 2009]
Has this experiment ended?
Mine have gone and I've tried a few searches that I remember had them but can't see any.
Cheers
Sid
I wonder if this will remove indented listings?
On a search I just saw the 1st, 2nd, and 4th sites listed had these mini site links.
The site in 1st place had 3 mini links. Sites 2 and 4 each had 4 mini links.
Site 2 also had an indented listing.
The site in 3rd place had no mini links.
And yes, there can be inline links on a second or third result (haven't seen any past a #3 ranking) if there are what you call "proper" sitelinks in the first position.
[edited by: tedster at 11:17 pm (utc) on May 11, 2009]
How does Google identify the most relevant links so well?
What it does signal to me is that Google is demonstrating an understanding and relevance of site's navigation heirarchies in the the way a searcher would prioritise. This will really raise the bar and can only advance further.
With the previous year or so of continued geographic search related results and now internal site relevance coming to the fore search is starting to become much more complex to manage from an SEO planning perspective.
More shake up in the SERPS to come?
[edited - hadn't read 2nd page]
