Posted by on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 4:20 pm.
Google has recently been trailing a new method for displaying site-links in its’ search results. Site-links are essentially a mini site-map for a search result in Google.
Traditionally, site-links only appeared for the top result of a search if the top result was by far, the most suitable match. For example, if you search ‘Creare’, because we are one of the only companies in the UK called Creare, our site is listed first with a Site-map breakdown of some of our internal pages; giving further choice to the search engine user.
Google are currently trialing a different method of displaying these links, on ‘one-line’ Site links (See the image – top right) instead of columns of up to 8 links. Similar to normal Site-links, one-line Site-links are generated by a Google algorithm and can be displayed in various combinations based on the search by the user.
I have seen this new technique being used on and off over the past 3 weeks. As I write this post, the new ‘One-Line’ links are not visible however I’m sure they will be back shortly.
Having these shorter (reduced to 3 links) Site-links on the results, means that the listings appear more equally and also allow multiple web sites to have Site-links displayed.
Channel