Sitelinks and your web site

Google recently started to include a set of links below some results to pages within the site. These new additional links are called Sitelinks.

It seems that Google displays Sitelinks if a web site is an authority site for the search term. The following screenshot shows the first results for a "cnn" search:

1. CNN.com

CNN.com delivers the latest breaking news and information of the latest top stories, weather, business, entertainment, politics and more
www.cnn.com/ - 105 k- 1 September 2006 – Cashed –Similar pages-Filter

SI.com – News and scores form…http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/
International Edition – http://edition.cnn.com/
CNNMoney.com –http://money.cnn.com/
Entertainment –http://cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/
more results from cnn.com >>

What are Google Sitelinks?

Google explains the new links on its webmaster pages:

How do you compile the list of links shown below some search results?

The links shown below some sites in our search results, called Sitelinks, are meant to help users navigate your site. Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they're looking for.

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 for the user's query, we won't show them.

At the moment, Sitelinks are completely automated. We're always working to improve our Sitelinks algorithms, and we may incorporate webmaster input in the future.

How does Google calculate Sitelinks?

Google claims that the Sitelinks are created automatically. If Google uses an algorithm to calculate Sitelinks, there must be a way to influence that algorithm.

There are several theories on how Sitelinks are calculated:

1. Google might track the number of clicks for different results. If a web site gets a lot of traffic for a special keyword then the web site will get Sitelinks on Google's result page.

For example, if you use a special trademark term on your web pages that cannot be found on other web sites then many people will click on your web site in Google's results when they search for that search term. It's likely that your web site will get Sitelinks for such a search term.

2. The link architecture of a web site might help. Links at the top of the HTML source of a web site seem to have a better chance to be included as Sitelinks.

3. Google might use the Google toolbar to determine Sitelinks. The more often a page is bookmarked the more likely it is that these pages will be used as Sitelinks. Google's toolbar can collect a lot of information about a web site.

At the moment, it's hard to tell how Google calculates the new Sitelinks. It's probably a combination of click data, toolbar data and other factors. If you see Sitelinks for your web site, then Google has probably classified your web site as an authority site for the search term.

TAG: html sitelinks code

Official Site for Big Brother. Australia. Mexico. Africa. USA. Uncensored. VIP.

Is your HTML code valid for the SE?

You have placed your most important keywords in your web page title. You have the optimal keyword density on your web page. Your link popularity score is shooting through the roof. You have added lots of content to your web site. You have double-checked your robots.txt file. You have read the past 70 newsletter issues and you're becoming the status of an search engine optimization expert in your company. :)

In spite of everything - your web site is still ranked nowhere at all. Then it comes to your mind... are the search engines actually able to read my web pages at all?

Web pages are written in a special language called HTML. Like any language, HTML is constantly changing although there's the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, for short) which is the governing body that establishes what is valid HTML
code and what is not.

Search engine crawler programs obey the HTML standard. They are only able to index your web site if it is compliant to the HTML standard. If there's a mistake in your web page code, they stop crawling your web site and probably forget what they've collected so far.

Fortunately, the W3C offers a free online service that can check the HTML validity of your web pages. You can find it here.

Another benefit of writing clean HTML standard compatible code is what the W3C calls "interoperability". It means that valid code is automatically cross-browser compatible, i.e. it works in different web browsers on different operating systems (although the actual display of the HTML code depends on the web browser).

To help search engine crawler programs to index your web site, you should also follow these tips:

Use simple tables in your HTML code and avoid overly nested tables, i.e. tables within tables within tables. Most HTML errors can probably be found in this area.
Move long JavaScript code to an external .js file. Search engines cannot read JavaScript code..
Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to remove excessive usage of HTML font tags. Replacing font tags throughout a page with styles saves a significant amount of code and makes it easier for search engines to index your web page.

If you use Cascading Style Sheets to make your web pages smaller, make sure that they are also technically correct. Fortunately, the W3C also offers a free CSS validation service.