Last year, people started to
notice that
Google began showing "subtopic" or "subcategory" links below their listing, if
they were the first in a Google search. Now, Google’s finally confirmed the
change as a permanent feature and given it a name: sitelinks.
Here’s an example of sitelinks in action, which I
tapped into doing a search for
HP:
Notice how under the first result, there are a number of sub-listings, such
as:
Software & Driver Downloads – https://welcome.hp.com/…/us/en/support.html
Contact HP – https://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/contact_us.html
Jobs – https://www.jobs.hp.com/
Small & Medium Business – https://www.hp.com/sbso/
Those are sitelinks, and now named via the
Information about Sitelinks post at the Official Google Webmaster Central
Blog. Do the search, and you’ll see only the first result gets them (you’ll also
notice that Google is failing to remove the second
www.hp.com listing as it should — only one major listing per web site per
results page should be showing. I think there’s a bug, at the moment).
How do you get sitelinks? You have to be in the first position for a search. Aside
from that, whether they’ll still then show up and exactly which ones show, if
so, aren’t explained. Here’s the new
help page on that.
Want some clues? Try looking at our
Google Web Site
Categories Explored post from earlier this year.
Want to comment or discuss? Visit our
Getting New Sitelinks Under Your Top Listing At Google thread at the Search
Engine Watch Forums.