Google’s Sitelinks Search Box
Several months ago, Google announced a new sitelinks search box. Almost immediately, it became one of the fastest growing Schema implementations on the web.
Accoring to SimilarTech the SearchAction markup now dominates all other Schema types on the top one million sites that they monitor.
Understanding Sitelinks
Sitelinks are a listing format in the SERPs that show a website’s main page as well as several targeted internal links indented below the main entry, and organized into two columnbs.
In the diagram below, (1) indicates the main page listing, and (2) indicates the internal site links:
Sitelinks only display for branded or navigational queries. For example, if users search for “magento,” they are probably going to get to Magento’s official website, www.magento.com. Because Google algorithmically intuits this, they deliver not only Magento.com as the main result, but also additional options that point users to internal pages.
Big Brands
Strangely enough, some of the world’s largest brand search queries don’t have sitelinks. For instance, you take the brand “coca cola”…
The absence of sitelinks is probably due to the fact that most queries for “coca cola” aren’t necessarily looking for the company, but instead for news, locations or brand information regarding Coke. The search, then, is notnavigational. The knowledge graph results—maps, images, news, etc.—are focused on delivering the relevant results.
Why Google Sitelinks Are Important
Google explains why sitelinks are important. “They are meant to help users navigare your site… to save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they’re looking for.”
In other words, sitelinks gives users the best results in the shortest amount of time.
As Google explains, “We only show sitelinks for results when we think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn’t allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don’t think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant to the user’s query, we won’t show them.”
Sitelinks will undoubtedly improve your traffic, reputation, and CTRs. Getting sitelinks isn’t a result of luck, but of website and SEO best practices. Have patience, read up about Sitelinks on blogs like ours, and you’ll start seeing sitelinks soon enough.
