Hi there,

For Popular Picks Part Deux, Red Cardinal asked for a "better
explanation of Sitelinks - in particular what happens if they are
blocked by a user."
http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/browse_...

Thanks for your suggestion, Richard! (Our response is written
below. :) Everyone, please let us know if we can provide
clarification.

Take care, and have a super week!
Maile

Sitelinks are created algorithmically to help users quickly navigate
to the information they need on your site. To display sitelinks,
Google must basically determine: 1) a relevant structure for your site
conducive to sitelinks, and 2) that sitelinks will be helpful for the
user's query.

For your verified site in Webmaster Tools, you can view your available
sitelinks. If you choose to block a sitelink, it will then appear in
Webmaster Tools as blocked. Once the change becomes effective, the
blocked sitelink will not appear in search results. You will not
immediately see a new sitelink listed in Webmaster Tools to replace
your blocked sitelink.

For example, let's say you have 8 sitelinks in Webmaster Tools. If you
choose to block a sitelink, it will be removed from your "Current
sitelinks" section and added to the "Blocked sitelinks" section. The
blocked sitelink will not appear in search results for 90 days, and it
can be unblocked at any time. (It does, however, take a bit of time
for the blocked/unblocked change to take effect.) Every time you visit
the Sitelinks page in Webmaster Tools, whether or not you modify your
Sitelinks settings, the blocked sitelinks will renew their blocked
time for an additional 90 days.

In search results, the sitelinks displayed are determined
algorithmically based on the user's query. So, while Webmaster Tools
may show 8 sitelinks for your verified site, it's possible that search
results show only a subset (e.g. search results display 4 sitelinks).
Furthermore, the sitelinks displayed in search results can vary
according to the query (e.g. different combinations of sitelinks for
different queries).

Common questions
Can I trigger new sitelinks to appear in Webmaster Tools?
New sitelinks appear in Webmaster Tools when a general sitelink update
occurs. Updates (i.e. new sitelinks in search results and/or Webmaster
Tools) are not affected by your blocking or unblocking sitelinks. New
sitelinks cannot be triggered manually.

How can I get sitelinks to appear for my site in search results?
Your site must have at least 3 unblocked sitelinks in order for your
sitelinks to appear in search results.  Therefore:

1. If you block sitelinks in Webmaster Tools and leave fewer than 3
remaining, no sitelinks will appear for your site in search results.

2. If you have fewer than 3 sitelinks algorithmically generated for
your site, you will not see a sitelink options in Webmaster Tools.

Sitelinks are calculated algorithmically. Having a crawlable,
intuitive architecture is helpful in generating sitelinks. Also,
creating compelling, unique content or providing a useful service
(thus making your site highly relevant to user queries) can increase
the probability of sitelink generation -- and thus your site
displaying sitelinks in search results!

Nice explanantion Maile.

I wouldn't be me unless I asked another question :)  Nice easy one
though :O

How often might a sitelinks update occur?

Rgds and thanks
Richard
On Sep 8, 7:55 pm, Maile Ohye wrote:

That explains it a bit.

However I blocked some site links over 4 weeks ago and they still
continue to show in the search results. In that time Webmasters show
new sitelinks which I am happy to keep but they are not showing
becasue older blocked links are still showing.

This may also be to do with a sitelink update but its frustrating as I
really dont want those links to show!

I have another question re:

For clarification - are you saying that your site might actually
display sitelinks other than the 8 displayed in the console?

Or are all sitelinks displayed a subset of the 8 links displayed in
the console?

Rgds, and thanks
Richard

Hi there,

Thanks for the questions!

Sitelinks are re-calculated/updated in the scale of several weeks.

No, sorry if I was unclear. The sitelinks displayed in search results
should appear as your sitelinks in Webmaster Tools (though
discrepancies can occur during updates).

websiteaficionado, a blocked sitelink in Webmaster Tools should take
effect in search results within several days. Can you provide the
Group:
1. Your site
2. What sitelinks you've blocked in Webmaster Tools
3. A query that generates the blocked sitelinks

Thanks,
Maile

Thank you kindly Miss Ohye :)

On Sep 16, 9:25 pm, Maile Ohye wrote:

Hi,

Im currently a developer @ a major sports league in the US and trying
to get some help w/ Sitelinks.  We are currently hosting main team
sites as subdomains to our main domain and nearly every team has
complained about their Sitelinks being completely wrong, teams show up
on other teams searches and it's a bit of a mess and Im really
confused as to what to do to solve this problem.  I registered all
teams and tried to disable Sitelinks but they are still showing up.
Obviously Id rather have them work.  If someone from Google can
contact me that would really help otherwise a posting on the best
solution would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks.

- Jon

Per the charter:
I want to reach someone at Google.
This is the place to do it!  As noted above, we have a great many
Googlers in different offices regularly reading, escalating, and -- to
the extent possible -- replying to posts here.  But please do not
write "Hey [insert Googler's name]!  HEEEEELP!!!!!"  These posts are
less likely to get our attention (because, let's face it, would you
really want to see an entire group filled with those sorts of subject
lines?)

Sorry, we do not offer phone or e-mail support for Webmaster issues at
this time.

http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help/web/webmaster-he...

On Sep 25, 9:16 pm, Jon Baer wrote:

Thanks Maile!

(and thanks Richard for the great follow-up questions)

The sitelink update frequency and the time deletions
take to have an effect I recall have been asked here.

The explanation of the 3 sitelink minimum I can't
recall seeing ever!

All great information. :-)

Thanks again,
Abracadabra
On Sep 8, 2:55 pm, Maile Ohye wrote:

Ok lets try w/ an example then ... :-)

If you Google for "New York Mets" you will see sitelinks to the
Philladelphia Phillies (phillies.mlb.com), so obviously the New York
Mets would not want that so how would they prevent those links from
showing up since that is theoretically a different site.  I have read
that subdomains are really treated as "folders" within the main top
level domain, true?  If so how does this affect sitelinks?

Thanks for any insight to resolving this PR / marketing issue.

On Sep 26, 12:29 am, JLH wrote:

Great, Jon, thanks for helping us out!  JLH, thanks for lending a hand
to fair support practices.

Yes, blocking the sitelink through Webmaster Tools is currently the
most effective method. I noticed mlb.com has several subdomains for
each team. You mentioned earlier that your blocked sitelinks were
still appearing.  Did you block them under newyork.mets.mlb.com,
mets.mlb.com, or a different domain?

Subdomains can be associated with their domain in the creation of
sitelinks. This is helpful for many site designs, such as if I owned
example.com and created the subdomains "reviews.example.com" and
"faqs.example.com" -- I'd want users to see sitelinks from both my
main domain and my subdomains.

There are also cases like mlb.com where another subdomain's sitelinks
are undesirable for the webmaster. We're working to improve the
situation. :) In the meantime, though, disabling sitelinks remains the
best option.

Jon, if we can help further diagnose your Webmaster Tools Sitelinks
issue, please let the Group know.

Thanks!
Maile

This is fantastic. I have a question though.

You stated above that having a good site structure would be important
to get good sitelinks, or any sitelinks so that Google can determine
the importance of pages.

Could one say that if you dont have sitelinks, or not appropriate
sitelinks, that you don't have good structure?

My site is set up like a pyramid, or so I think it is. Very broad cats
with more specific cats. Example:

Rings(top level cat)
   Belly Rings
   Diamond Rings
   Fashion Rings
   Gemstone Rings
      Amethyst Rings
      Sapphire Rings
      Emerald Rings
   Gold Rings
   Mens Rings
   Toe Rings

I am guessing I would want my top level categories to be in the site
links. Rings, Earrings, Bracelets, Necklaces etc.....

However, I only have sub,sub level categories at this time.....

Does this mean bad site structure?
Should I block the existing sitelinks to indicate there are better
choices and continue to do so until Google picks my top level cats?

I know that sitemaps is sent with the top level cats being just shy of
the home page for importance and that sub sub level cats are just shy
of top level cats and product pages are the lowest????

Does any of this seem right/wrong?

Michael

Thank you for a better understanding of sitelinks Maile.  However,
even though I have useful, compelling and unique content organized
logically through a few key subdomains containing well-crosslinked
pages, my sitelinks never appear in search results via any keyword
combination.  I have had text sitemaps active for the main URL and
each subdomain for more than a year.  Some are listed as sitelinks in
Webmaster Tools (although a couple of key high-value URL's haven't
been picked up).

My site is organized into five "spokes" through the use of the
subdomains, which would ideally be listed below the main search result
like those of, say, Kennedy Space Center's listing.  However, no dice
now or ever.  What can I do?

Maile - Would you mind backing up to some basics? There about six bad
sitelinks appearing in the google results page for virtually any
search on spellingcity. It's probably our fault as the high traffic
has forced us to turn off the SEO-friendly joomla links.  Your
directions start with: <i>For your verified site in Webmaster Tools,
you can view your available sitelinks.</i>.

Where inside my webmaster tools are they?

Maile - Let me be more specific since I've been researching this.
Google lists (today) some sitelinks for searches for SpellingCity.
For the results, here's a link:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ivYgxeJ6UCQ/SOkJ7Nncn6I/AAAAAAAAAWU/I4-yyru...

Inside my webmaster tools, I read that there are NO sitelinks for that
site.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ivYgxeJ6UCQ/SOkrId-pQnI/AAAAAAAAAWc/dcHJYR8...

How am I to block them? What am I doing wrong?
And for the whole blogpost on this:

I put my 9 year old son to work today testing SpellingCity.com. The
rationale was that we made some site optimizations this week to
improve performance ...so just to be sure, lets test to see if the
site still works....

First thing my son D tried was to google the site to find it. I almost
told him not to waste his time. I'm glad that I didn't. In Google, in
addition to the main site link, there are a number of (what I just
learned) are called: "Google Sitelinks". I've never paid much
attention to them before (pictured above). But, son D clicked on one
that produced a 404 error. hmmmm. So I started researching and learned
from a Google forum that:

Sitelinks are created algorithmically to help users quickly navigate
to the information they need on your site. To display sitelinks,
Google must basically determine: 1) a relevant structure for your site
conducive to sitelinks, and 2) that sitelinks will be helpful for the
user's query.

What should I do if my sitelinks are not useful or, as in my case,
going nowhere? BTW, I know the reason. One of our optimizations this
week was to remove joomla's SEO-friendly feature since it turns out
not to be high-performance-friendly. sigh.

The official google webmaster blog (quoted above) continues:
For your verified site in Webmaster Tools, you can view your available
sitelinks.

But I can't seem to find this anywhere in my webmaster tools. More
specifically, when I click thru to the option where it's supposed to
list my sitelinks and allow me block any sitelinks, I get a message
that no sitelinks exist (see the picture). Great. So I've asked google
on their official blog for help. I admit that I have very low
expectations for an answer but, we'll see. Stay tuned, maybe tomorrow,
I might have answers on how to find and fix them..... Also, how to get
a decent Jooma 404 page-not-found page up....See you tomorrow.

Hi guys,

Sorry for the delayed response, things have been hectic.

@Michael:

No, a lack of sitelinks, or undesired sitelinks, does not imply that
your site has poor structure or organization. Sitelinks may show
certain sub-sub-categories because regardless of your logical
hierarchical structure, these sub-sub-categories are popular with
users. :)

From Google's standpoint, we generate sitelinks because we're trying
to help the user to find their answer more quickly. They're not
generated to be an exact match to a site's top-level categories.

Only block the sitelinks if you truly do not want users to seem (e.g.
Jon's case above where his sitelinks showed a competitor's team).

You probably want to avoid blocking sitelinks as a signal for us to
recalculate them to meet your expectations. While we use blocked
sitelinks as input to improve our algorithm, just because they're
blocked doesn't guarantee you'll see the improvement you desire. Of
course, it's definitely your call -- feel free to do what's right for
your business.

@Wolfman: What's your site?

@spellingcity.com: Thanks for the screenshots (though I can't make out
the url of your site in sitelinksNone.png). In the other screenshot,
sitelinks are visible for www.spellingcity.com (with the www). Can you
please make sure that http://www.spellingcity.com/ is verified in
Webmaster Tools, not just http://spellingcity.com/ (without the www)?

If www.spellingcity.com is verified, then I'd re-check your sitelinks
in Webmaster Tools. If there was an earlier discrepancy, it's likely
we were in the middle of a sitelinks update.

Good luck, everyone!
Maile

Hi Maile.  Thanks for asking.  It's http://www.airwolf.tv

The content "spokes" as designated by subdomains are as follows:
http://series.airwolf.tv (Guide to the show)
http://wolfslair.airwolf.tv (Publications related to the show)
http://forum.airwolf.tv
http://projects.airwolf.tv (Showcase and resources for the fans)
http://games.airwolf.tv (FLASH games and downloads)

Because each area caters to a distinct purpose, having the choice to
go straight to the most applicable subdomain through sitelinks would
save the user a click and really help distinguish it among a sea of
search results.

On Oct 13, 2:05 am, Maile Ohye wrote:

Hello Maile :)

I run www.macblogz.com, and we have had some issues with our Google
Sitelinks. They show up perfectly in my webmaster tools, and have
shown up great in Google search results up until about a week ago.

The sitelinks are still in my webmaster account, and they look great
in there. Only when our name "macblogz" is searched, they do not
appear.

Any ideas to any steps that could be taken?

Thank you so much in advance,

Maile,

I found one keyword combination that brings my sitelinks up:
"Airwolf magazine"
Any idea what I can do to get them to come up with just "Airwolf" as
the keyword?

Hey Aviv,thanks for your comment. Looks like your sitelinks
returned :)
http://www.google.com/search?&rls=en&q=macblogz&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Wolfman, first of all, that's such a friggin' cool site!! (I'm
listening to the theme music right now as I type.) Sitelinks are often
produced when there's a high probability that the site is the top
match for the user's query. In other words, to have sitelinks for
[airwolf] you'll probably need to be the definitive first result.

Jon, in case you didn't catch it, searching for [New York Mets] shows
improved sitelinks. You no longer have the link to those non-Mets
World Series champions.
http://www.google.com/search?q=new%20york%20mets&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Take care, everyone!
Maile

On Nov 3, 3:45 pm, Maile Ohye wrote:

Thanks Maile!