Google Site Links

[Ridge]

So, I have always heard that site links in the google search are a very good thing..

I was pretty surprised that a site I have with about 40 pages has 5 site links listed. the site doesn't get super great traffic, but is my #1 earner by far and ranks well for tough keywords.

So, my question is - How does google determine what sites need site links? Is it traffic? Rankings?

Also, for anyone that has a site with site links, Do these sites convert better? Have better rankings? Etc.

The pages that have been given site links are some of my lowest traffic pages in this site, so I'm clueless as to how google decides which pages to assign them to.

[Randy]

From what I can tell, a site with a logical hierarchy (file structure) is more likely to receive site links than a site which doesn't. The subpages seem to be an attempt to determine what the important sections coming from the homepage are. And obviously, they're trying to look at #1 results which seem to have a clearly navigational intent to them. (Lots of sites have sitelinks if you search for them by their name, for example, because the thinking behind the sitelinks seems to be that sitelinks would be useful to someone looking for a site by name.)

[kingcobra]

Well I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "site links" but here's a short primer on this stuff:

If you do a search on site:yourdomain.com then this will give you what is supposed to be indexed pages of your site. I say supposed to because this isn't really accurate and in fact none of the search commands relating to any of this stuff really is. This will give you an idea at least.

Now you're talking about backlinks though I presume so now let's look at the command link:yourdomain.com. With this you'll get a very very small percentage of your backlinks and the ones that get returned are of no particular noteworthiness. Back when I had hundreds of backlinks I had two, and now with thousands I have 15. These 15 aren't good links and in fact it's a small grab bag of perhaps the worst - lingerie blog and such.

Next we have the yourdomain.com site:yourdomain.com command. This is used by some of the backlink checkers out there and it at least gives you a lot of results but too many - the actual backlinks, some references to your site on the net whick aren't indexed links, or might not even be links at all, plus depending on your site name, some stuff unrelated to your site as well.

Finally we have the iGoogle tools which include an external link report. This has a bit of a lag but is the only one which actually reports actual backlinks. If you're interested in keeping track of this stuff then this is a must have. You need to sign up for the free account and put some code in your site for them to track you.

[kingcobra]

Originally Posted by Randy

From what I can tell, a site with a logical hierarchy (file structure) is more likely to receive site links than a site which doesn't. The subpages seem to be an attempt to determine what the important sections coming from the homepage are. And obviously, they're trying to look at #1 results which seem to have a clearly navigational intent to them. (Lots of sites have sitelinks if you search for them by their name, for example, because the thinking behind the sitelinks seems to be that sitelinks would be useful to someone looking for a site by name.)

What is meant by "site links" here anyway? After reading this post I'm even more confused

[cjjr]

Originally Posted by kingcobra

What is meant by "site links" here anyway? After reading this post I'm even more confused

Ken, I believe both Randy are talking about these:

[Ridge]

Yep that's what we are talking about. Thanks for the response Randy

[kingcobra]

Originally Posted by cjjr

Ken, I believe both Randy are talking about these:

Interesting - I've never seen these and can't duplicate it on my Google search. You're just searching for "poker site" and this stuff comes up? I just get the regular listings.

[cjjr]

Originally Posted by kingcobra

Interesting - I've never seen these and can't duplicate it on my Google search. You're just searching for "poker site" and this stuff comes up? I just get the regular listings.

Hmm. I was just trying some random terms to post an example, but I was on google.ca. I just tried on google.com, and like you, I don't get any sitelinks for "poker site" anymore.

I don't know much about sitelinks, but it's an interesting topic.

[kingcobra]

I tried google.ca and I'm not seeing them there either. I've never seen anything other than the way it's "supposed" to work which is that if it's an authority site then there's a sublink from the same site below. I get this for my own site for instance in terms that I rank in the top 2 in. As far as these other site links well I wonder how common they are and Randy is seeing your stuff as well so that's 2 people on here at least.

[Randy]

Maybe try doing a search on google.us to see if you can duplicate this. I get sitelinks by searching for "poker listings" or by searching for "poker news". I even get them when searching for "card player".

They do good things for your clickthrough ratio if you have them for a competitive term.