It’s just a coincidence that after page rank update (yeah, dropped 1 level), this blog sitelinks appear back after been briefly missing. While I have stopped trying to figure that out, the new sitelinks really pleased me. To be honest, I’m kinda worried if the sitelink disappearance is due to ‘penalty’ or ‘slap’ from Google. Glad it is back now, hopefully permanently.
Do you keep track of your sitelinks? Is there any difference? Well.. yes in my case. If you compare the new sitelinks with old sitelinks on the screen shot below, except link to ‘blog resources’, other links are totally brand new link .
How to get sitelinks?
Before that, let’s take a look at what GoogleWebmaster says about sitelinks.
“We only show sitelinks for results when we think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn’t allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don’t think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user’s query, we won’t show them.”
Well.. it’s still pretty much unclear to most I guess, but what it’s trying to say is “keep your hands off sitelinks”. Then “It runs fully automated and there is no chance to game it.. ” Sort off, but you can try it. I found this post (need to be translated) clearly explaining about sitelinks, as well as providing quite comprehensive tips on how to get sitelinks.
Ok, back to this blog sitelinks, I’m not sure what Google really think when it made these links as sitelinks. I have no argument on other links except for ‘Celebrity’ and ‘Politics’ which has very limited coverage in this blog. But 1 thing for sure, it has something special that Google thinks these contents are very ‘useful’ to you. What do you think?
- Google – One of the most topics that I blogged
- Yahoo Mail – This blog has pretty good rank with this key phrase
- Celebrity – Only 1 post. Does this caught Google attention because of Bill Gates’s daughter post?
- Politics – Only 2 posts
- Blog Resources – One of the earliest page I published.
Anyway, you can block any sitelinks that you think irrelevant from Google Webmaster Central.
November 2009 Sitelinks
July 2009 Sitelinks
Tips to get sitelinks for WordPress blog
Base on my own sitelinks, if your blog runs on WordPress platform, there are a few points to note.
- Google lovew WordPress ‘page‘, not posts.
- Google no longer pick single post as one of links in sitelinks
- Sitelinks are made from pages, tags and categories
- Write pages with quality and comprehensive contents.
- Minimize changes on your blog – Theme, categories, tag, sitemap & etc
What should you do if your sitelinks disappear?
Sitelinks tend to disappear and then reappear on its own. Do not panic. If you think that you have not make any changes on any part of your blog at the time when the sitelinks disappeared, let it be. Sometimes, it is Google’s own algorithms that changes, not because of your blog. Furthermore, we have very little control on what would be your website sitelinks.
However, if you think it’s the changes that you have made before might be effecting the sitelinks, revert it back to the original one if you feel uncomfortable without it. Unless the change is meant for better SEO, ranking or what so ever that is positive, you have to think it very carefully.
If the sitelink disappeared followed by drastically dropped traffic, watch out, you’re in crisis. Google may has penalized or slapped your blog for some reason.
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