Recently, I came across news on how Google is testing out new one-line Google Sitelinks for some sites. Google Sitelinks are
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.
The thing with Google’s Site links are that they are completely automated. Google’s algorithms decide what links might be useful for your visitors. And that’s the positive part of it as well as the downside too.
Anyways coming back to my stumbling across the new one-line Sitelinks Google is testing. That’s when my curiosity got the best of me to see if ShanKrila ever got any sitelinks.
And to my surprise, it did! And so has my wife’s SpicyTasty.com – Indian Recipes blog.
I have to say Google really did a fine job in picking the most popular and useful posts from this site for the Sitelinks.
As you can see in the picture, here are the few posts being showcased in ShanKrila Sitelinks
- MagicJack Review
- Top Firefox Extensions
- Top WordPress Plugins
- Google Notebook RIP
- Gmail Goes Offline
- Gladinet
And there were a couple more good ones but with weird titles that I don’t know where they came from.
- WordPress 2.7 Tips, Hacks and Tricks – with a title Danny Beard
Incidentally Danny Beard left the last comment in that post. I have no idea why Google figured that would be the best title for the link! - Who Called Us – with a title of Corrinne@Trace Phone Number
Again, Corrinne left the last comment and Google picked that to be the title for the link!
So, as much I was excited to see the Sitelinks for ShanKrila in Google, I wanted to find out how to get rid of these or suggest a new title to Google.
A tweet immediately got me to this post on how to control your Sitelinks by my buddy @keithdsouza. Here’s the short version of it
How to Remove Unwanted Sitelinks?
- Login to Google Webmasters Tools
- Go to Links menu in the sidebar and click on Sitelinks (you will see the links if Google has generated sitelinks for your site)
- Every Sitelink has a block option you can choose.
- Choose ‘block‘ for the link you don’t want to appear in your Sitelinks and choose an option from the dropdown telling Google why you want to block it. Also, you can leave a descriptive comment.
- You will see how long the links will be blocked.
- You can also unblock links you have blocked.
I am sure changes such as this could take a while to appear in Google search results. Plus the time to propagate to different Google servers. I blocked couple of the above mentioned in links a few days back but they still appear in sitelinks at the time of writing this post.
If you’d like to learn how Google compiles the list of Sitelinks, have a look here. You can find all my webmaster related posts here.
This is very useful information, especially for someone fairly new at this. I like the way you explain it and how to fix it. Step by step directions we new people always appreciate. I’m sure even a few of the not so new people will also find this useful even if they would never admit it, lol.
Thanks
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hey K,
Good info on how to control your site links, though you’ve got to get them first (easier said than done)! And I guess an added bonus for commenting on shankrila.com is that the commenter may get on your site links. At least “Corrinne@Trace Phone Number” did, at least for a little while. 🙂 Steve, the trade show guru
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Most of the authority sites had the sitelinks before they ever became available to anyone else — I remember it from like a year ago. I’m actually surprised they opened this up a bit. A lot of sites don’t have them available at all.
RT Cunninghams last blog post..Our Neighborhood Slaughterhouse is Becoming a College Campus
Steve, true! That definitely could be a big incentive isn’t it? lol
RT, that’s exactly why I was so elated to see to 2 of my sites get Sitelinks and that I had been unaware of it! But, it’s pretty good to have them.
how to do it…
http://www.viewsinline.com