Sitelinks in SERPs vs. Sitelinks in Webmaster Tools
Posted: January 8th, 2009
You may have noticed that for some of your websites, especially big and/or highly trafficked ones, links to that website will appear directly underneath its listing in the search engine result pages (SERPs) of Google. These links are called “sitelinks,” and they are somewhat controllable through Google’s Webmaster Tools, which offers this definition:
Sitelinks are additional links [that] Google sometimes generates from site contents in order to help users navigate your site. Google generates these sitelinks periodically from your site’s contents.
Since you are limited to only eight sitelinks, if you see that one has been generated for a page that is inconsequential, then you should remove (block) it. Hopefully, another one will be generated soon based on your site’s navigational structure and architecture, to replace the blocked one.
Search Result Sitelinks vs. Those in Webmaster Tools
Similar to content snippets that are displayed in SERPs, sitelinks are also dynamically generated based on a user’s search query. For this reason, your sitelinks shown in search results may also be automatically adjusted, and differ from those found in your Webmaster Tools account.
Other Notes
Sitelinks do not in themselves improve rankings, however, they do increase click-through rates to your website as it takes up more real estate on the screen. This factor increases search traffic to your site.
Tags: Google, search traffic, SEO, sitelinks
These extra links are to show that the site is an authoritative one.