Sitelinks Changes - April 2011

[MelissaLB]

Anyone notice a change in their Sitelinks lately? A few days ago we notice our Sitelinks changed from showing 8 (has been showing 8 for a few years, often changing, but always 8) to showing only 5!

Does this mean that Google is showing us less love? For the past month (about) we've had a slight increase in G traffic as well as great conversions from G traffic. Can't imagine they'd want to show us less love right now!

Although, in WMT it is showing that we still have 8 sitelinks and the last update is reporting as April 8th. hmmmmm..

Maybe it's not just us! Anyone else notice anything?

[denisl]

I believe 8 is the maximum, but sometimes G feels it cannot find that number of pages worth a sitelink. Like everything else googlewise, I'm not sure you read much into it

[netmeg]

Yea, they may just be resorting which ones they want to show.

[tedster]

I've also seen a number of Sitelink variations in the past few weeks, including a 5-stack. I'd say it looks like testing time for Google (so what else is new?)

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I find sitelinks to be useless at getting traffic, honestly.

[netmeg]

Heh, I sure don't.

[crobb305]

I still see 8 sitelinks when I search my company name or domain name. I see 4 sitelinks on some phrases that I rank well on.

Does this mean that Google is showing us less love?

For your site, possibly. The number of sitelinks that show up for your company name is related to some metric (trust/authority/PageRank/combination). Maybe your site has lost some juice on the backend? I don't think it's all about PageRank, because I have seen PR5 sites that show zero sitelinks and other PR5s with eight. Sitelinks also seem to increase with the age of the domain, which is why I tend to think trust/authority scores play a role, but it's likely a combination of everything.

[tedster]

The stack of 5 sitelinks seems very recent to me - and possibly a test, at least I don't ever recall seeing it before. The 5-stacks I've been running into are not in the #1 positions, by the way.

[goodroi]

The sitelinks display for my sites seem to change every few weeks. Recently I've gone from 8 to 5 and back to 8. I don't read anything into other than Google is in everflux with their constant testing.