Google's New And Improved Search Feature: Sitelinks

Google has announced in a blog post that it has "expanded and improved" a search feature called sitelinks, which you may know as those tiny little links beneath the main webpage you see when you search for certain terms on Google.

Here's what sitelinks used to look like:

And here's what sitelinks look like now, post-expansion-and-improvement:

So what's changed? The font size is bigger; there is now a mini-description of each sitelink below each result; and the beginning of the sitelink's web address appears beneath each mini-description. In addition, searchers will get up to 12 sitelinks per search (up from a previous maximum of 8), depending upon the size of the site.

The major improvements, according to the Google blog post, are in readability, algorithmic site ranking, and accessibility.

Some may not agree that the new version of sitelinks is better than what appeared before: if you are not looking for the webpage Google thinks you are searching for, all of your other search results have been pushed farther down the page by the more plentiful sitelinks.

An informal sample of search terms found that the new-and-improved sitelinks appeared for many top queries, such as "Facebook," "iPhone" and "Huffington Post," but some queries, like "pickle berries," still returned no sitelinks at all.

It has been a busy week for Google, which, despite it being only Tuesday as of press time, has already announced its intention to buy Motorola Mobility for over $12 billion and unveiled a shopping app for the iPad.

Google says that the new sitelinks will begin rolling out worldwide to those using Chrome, Firefox, and IE7 immediately.

Comments

[Deva Sagayam]

11:19 AM on 08/20/2011

duckduckgo.com is the way to go.

[Niki Spencer]

01:40 PM on 08/17/2011

Not every search engine/social site/photo sharing app has to look similar... people *LIKE* differences in their offerings... Let Bing do Bing and Facebook do Facebook and Google should do Google... grrrr

[bessielil]

01:18 PM on 08/17/2011

Pickleberries? Likely they will get a lot more artsy etsy hits than usual today.

[JohnInKC]

11:55 AM on 08/17/2011

Sorry, I like the looks of the old sitelinks better - more concise and to the point and takes up much less space on the screen. I only need the sitelinks - don't need the explanations. Why can't we have a choice as to whether or not we want these "so-called" improvements (like all the Google Maps crap being added)?

[French Toast]

10:32 AM on 08/17/2011

Because the sitelinks aren't universal, I like them. It seems to do that on sites it's really really sure of.

[planetjeffy]

09:18 PM on 08/17/2011

you have to go into Google Webmaster Central - and set up the sitelinks for your site

[Carrie Richards]

09:35 AM on 08/17/2011

Businesses are being forced to purchase SEM to ensure first page placement with new and improved site links potentially pushing them deeper into the search.

[SoCalNick]

12:01 PM on 08/17/2011

SO True!!

I am getting sick of Paying out the nose and working our Arse off to get First page listing organically and then having Google Change the rules and have to start over or pay more.

Google HAS to be feeling the pressure , Business's will not tolerate this much longer.

That is all

[HighTechPost]

08:59 PM on 08/16/2011

Google Social Search is a war against Microsoft's Bing as they are already into social search...
http://hightechpost.blogspot.com/2011/08/google-search-to-integrate-google-post.html

regards
hightechpost