Over the past few weeks Google has been experimenting and testing a larger sized font for sitelinks in organic search on specific types of search queries. Google has recently announced that these larger super sized sitelinks are here to stay and believe they will “make it even easier to find a section of a website site you want.”
Sitelinks are very useful at predicting what areas of a website you are most likely going to visit even if you have not specified this in your search query. They can be used for speedy navigation around large websites, and anything that speeds up search is extremely important for Google.
Sitelinks from now on will contain up to 12 links, instead of the usual 8. These oversized site links appear when a company/organisation/location or exact URL has been entered as search phrase.
Although this new amendment to the search engine results pages won’t revolutionise search, I quite like them and see it as an improved handy feature that can help aid the search process.
Usually when a search query is entered into Google, a generic term is often used first and then refined with a longer tail search phrase to help improve the relevancy of the search results. As an example, I recently stayed over in London for a few days. Before I visited, I wanted to find out the cost of ticket prices for the London Eye. I did not know the web address so I entered into Google ‘London Eye’. This search query displayed the London Eye website in the top position and within the description of the 1st result I was shown 6 site links.
These site links are quite small and potentially overlooked. After Google’s amendments to sitelinks, if I run this same query again I am now presented with completely different results.
The SERPs now displays 10 larger sized site links with a URL and small snippet of text. I am more inclined to click on a site link in this format due to the increased amount of information I am being provided with. I am drawn in more to the site links and can quickly scan the small description to determine what information will be displayed on a particular page.
So far these larger sized site links only appear in Chrome, but over the next few days they will be rolled out into Firefox and Internet Explorer.
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