Topical Sitelinks - Information-centered as opposed to brand-centric

[chal00d]

This is a question about non-branded, topical sitelinks - i.e. those sitelinks without additional descriptive text that tend to be shown for queries that are information centered as opposed to brand-centric.

I'm been noticing an increase in these among some big brands, particularly in the travel vertical, and wanted to throw it out there to the esteemed WebmasterWorld community.

Are these the preserve of big site SEO/brands, or is there anything we as webmasters can/should be doing to increase our chances of getting these topical sitelinks to appear?


Cheers!

[edited by: goodroi at 10:45 am (utc) on Mar 25, 2014]

[goodroi]

Topical sitelinks have been appearing for a long time. To trigger it you need to position yourself as an industry leader with strong ranking signals AND clear internal structure for Google to understand. Originally it looked to me like internal link structure was the driving force on what would be selected. More recently I have been suspecting that CTR might be part of the formula.

Sitelinks can potentially be triggered by any website. I know this for a fact because some of my websites display sitelinks and they are not big sites IMHO. I don't consider myself a big brand but my websites tend to display in auto suggest so I guess I am doing something right ;)

As for the travel vertical, I find a variety of sitelinks being triggered. If I search for "Rome Hotels", I see Frommers displaying information & brand centric sitelinks. I don't think Google is preferring one type over the other. I think this is more about internal link structure and possibly CTR influence.

[netmeg]

Many of my sites are seasonal, and I notice the sitelinks change depending on what's 'in season' - so I for one think they may also be affected by user behavior.

[roshaoar]

I've always thought that sitelinks were decided by which pages users choose more often than others when arriving at the site. But there's some minimum thresholds as well.