Google attributes certain websites "Sitelinks" and at the SEW forums, I found an interesting discussion on what it is that causes this. It's all speculation though, so I've decided to start a research project on what factors in Google's data/algorithms might cause these Sitelinks to appear.
The first thing I've done has been to establish a methodology of possible factors to test for. Second, I've created a sample set of 100 sites that have Sitelinks. Here is the list of sitelinked sites:
Atu2 Kidsastronomy General Motors McGill University of Toronto Kraft Omniture Insurance.com Sierra Club MSN Yahoo Goog SEW SEL SEObook SEOmoz Squidoo TD Canada Trust Parliament DoubleClick 24/7 Real Media Loblaws Xbox360 Forum Loreal KidsDinos Biology4kids CoolMath4Kids Genealogy.com Ancestry.com PlentyofFish Problogger Vistaprint Logos.it Blue Host Hostgator Mortgage101 Tiger Direct Law.com Microsoft Adobe PlanetPhotoshop W3C ScienceMag Journal of Medicine Journal of Psychiatry Journal of Biological Chemistry American Bar Association Beckett Alibris Digg Stumble Upon Media.com Fox TV Canada.com Conservative Party of Canada Liberal Party of Canada Green Party of Canada Food Network Scholarships Canada Standford newspaper London England – VisitLondon.com comes up below news results and below Maps results with Sitelinks. Toronto Canada – Toronto.ca below maps CollegeHumor Download.com IGN.com Counter-scipt.net – Counter-strike scripts Feedreader.com Newsgator CTV – CTV.ca comes up after a futher query link to Google finance and stock info TSX.com for Stock Berkshire Hathaway Mohawk College – Mohawk How Stuff Works Kids Health Victoria’s Secret Myspace Alexa Facebook LinkedIn Technorati Sitepoint DigitalPoint V7n Compete Bargain.com HaAretz Yediot Ahronot Pajamas Media Vertrue Consumer Reports Shareasale CJ.com Namepros Olive Garden Gardeners – Garden Supply Shoppers drug mart (but not Pharmaprix) Creditcards.com ISEdb Pandia WebProNews
It's a pretty prestigious group, I think we can agree. I'll be conducting tests over the next weeks and months to figure out what the Sitelinks attribution factors are. Stay tuned for more. In the meantime, try typing in the name of your favourite site into your Firefox address bar. You'll find that those sites that have sitelinks will see their site show up right away; some others will return a Google results page (there's a grey area where sites have no sitelinks but they do get returned automatically in Firefox.
Google's been acting strange lately, contradicting its' own advice and guidelines to webmasters. (If you're thinking, is he about to go on about why Google sucks, again... you'd be very perceptive.) First of all, Google's been advertising in Gmail, using all-caps. They've had an ad running that says something like SEARCH Engine yada yada. What happened to no excessive capitalization?
Second of all, Google's got some canonicalization problems going on. Both local.google.com and maps.google.com produce the same content, and one doesn't redirect to the other. It seems from searching Google that they've canonized their maps.google.com subdomain, but you'd think they would redirect the local sub?
Strange, strange behaviour from Google. Like I said, these hypocrites suck.
Still at Bill's excellent site, we have word of new Place Rank and Interestingness ranking and scoring mechanisms. It seems that Google's taking more user generated content a la Gmail and Feedburner and using it to mark up maps and Google Earth.
Over at GoodROI we find out that Yahoo has modified their SERPs with some local data. On a search for McDonald's, Greg found a new link under McDonald's main site result that lets you find McDonald's locations near you! Yahoo've also done some other things to their SERPs, so go see what Greg has to say.
Still on the Yahoo SERPs, it looks like they've got more than "locations near you" added. There are also Flickr-based slideshows directly integrated into the results, OneBox style (I know Yahoo won't like me saying OneBox style, but what're ya gonna do, eh? hehe). Try searching for Montreal, Canada or as Yahoo Search's Lingxian Ding did, Phuket, Thailand.
A vocal minority of webmasters largely agree with me that Google sucks.
Pursuant to my post on why Google sucks, I conducted several polls online. The stunning result that I came across was that, in spite of frequent close-minded Google defences, a vocal minority of webmasters hate Google.
Somewhere in the middle, initially reaching as high a fraction as one third, Earners' Forum members to the tune of 20% said Google sucks.
Unfortunately, many of the people polled who had the courage to criticize Google, did it mainly based on the narrow picture of search and ad publishing. The critiques I levelled at Google were not considered in the debates.
In any event, if you weren't sufficiently convinced by my previous post about Google's suckiness, look at these twosearches (the second one concerns a potential client I'm courting).
Do you see that both result sets have duplicate content? No? Visit Larry Bodine's Legal Marketing Blawg. Now, Larry is a friend, and I asked him for some promotion on his blog for that post. His post essentially duplicates my ten reasons. And you know what? Since he paraphrased me, his post ranks. Try handing your friend's essay, paraphrased, to your English professor and see what he thinks of it. For all its talk of imitating human beings, Google still has some pretty obvious shortcomings.
(Don't get me wrong, I'm not angry that Larry paraphrased the post or that it ranks - good for him if it's pulling traffic - my point is just to show the mediocrity of Google's results.)
Second, do you see Chetday.com's charisma.php in Google's SERPs? Well, it just so happens the page is essentially a clone, featuring different copy, of personalcharisma.com. Interestingly, while I'm sure the same owner owns both sites, personalcharisma.com says it's charisma infoproduct is being promoted by Jenny something, not Chet Day. Anyway, by the use of paraphrasing and some internal link spam (scroll to the bottom), two otherwise identical (and spammy) pages are ranking in Google for the same keywords. (Notice also that the Jeannie Crabtree's whois email is Jeannie health-doc.com, which site is themed on alternative and natural health. Which is coincidentally Chet Day's topic too. ;) )
On a related note, you might care to see what these people have to say about how Google sucks, and their alternative to it. Google Sux, Alternative Search Solution
Incidentally, look for a follow up post as I analyze how the spammy sales pages are ranking in Google. On some forums I read and participate in, I asked about getting landing pages to rank in the organic search results, and this seems like the opportunity to find out. Stay tuned. And remember: if anyone asks, Google Sucks!
Google Sucks. All of us SEO consultants work our butts off for Google rankings because Google has dominant market share and because Yahoo and MSN are too lazy to prioritize search.
Update: Reading the comments, and from emails, it's obvious that many of you searching "Google Sucks" are frustrated that you're not getting traffic from Google. If you want help getting search engine traffic from Google, (and Yahoo and MSN) then perhaps you might consider buying an hour of my time.
Alternately, if you want to learn SEO and have tools to help you out, I encourage you to read my review of SEOmoz Pro's tools, articles and membership generally. SEOmoz's Pro membership is the most popular in the search industry (over 2000 memberships sold!), so you'll probably find that it meets your needs too.
But Google is much more than a search company now, and while I concede they're reasonably good at search, Google still sucks enormously overall. This is my contribution to the web's massive love-hate relationship with Google: 10 Reasons why Google Sucks my Hairy Chia Pets.
Here are the top 10 reasons Google sucks:
10) Google is fine with spam in certain markets. Look at how spammers are dominating the 'buy viagra' SERPs: .EDUs keep getting hacked, having pages with links or redirects sending visitors to pseudo-pharmacies. Conclusion: Google needs to adjust its TrustRank algorithm! TR's giving too much weight to old domains/seed sites. 9) Google's tech support teams have a tendency to want to copy-paste the FAQ in their email responses. Thanks, I can read the q&a myself, Mr. Google-tech-support-bot. If I'm writing you, it's because the FAQ wasn't satisfactory.
8) Google serves all those useless, generic, bid-increasing eBay ads. Plus, it enables people to do arbitrage on AdWords traffic. G, don't you want people clicking AdWords in the long term? Why whine about the small guy trying to make a buck on being an affiliate if you're going to serve all those eBay and arbitrage ads? It's not the small affiliates that suck, Google, it's your hypocritical policies.
7) Google places extreme trust on Yahoo paid links in the Yahoo directory. Then it tells the rest of the webmaster world to put rel="nofollow" attributes on their paid links. FYI, Google: You're still allowed to make a buck even if you're not on the NYSE. If paid links are such a concern, don't get editorial-review and paid links confused, just develop another standard, like a rel="paid-reviewed" and rel="paid-unreviewed" attribute. And ask Yahoo to use them too.
6) Google's expansion into so many different markets and control over such a wide array of personal information is downright scary. And the fact Google has been willing to work with China in censoring information Chinese people may want to find doesn't comfort me one bit.
5) Google AdWords doesn't actually fulfill its promise of letting the little guy compete. Before embarking on an AdWords journey, one has to scour forums for information on targeting, match types, bidding strategies etc. The result is that the main AdWords buyers are eBay, spammers and arbitragers, and big companies. The great equalizer it ain't.
4) On a note related to #6, Google keeps on buying out the little guys. Reminds me of another big tech company that's infamous for the anti-trust lawsuits it's been hit with. Except that Google's engineers tend to solve problems, usually.
3) Google claims to be so concerned about keeping spam out of the SERPs, yet it lets so much garbage be advertised on AdWords. I can't even count the Clickbank get-rich-quick scams people are hawking through your Google AdWords ads (ironically, the scammers present themselves as get-rich-quick review sites that prevent people getting scammed). It's 2007 Google; Western society gave up "buyer beware" in favour of consumer protection last century!
2) Google's Adsense for content matching algorithms are awful, particularly in Gmail. The ads you've served me with when I check my mail are completely irrelevant, making for a sucky user experience and generally sucky "researching mode" rather than "buying mode" leads when people click. (But then, I guess I'd be creeped out if your algorithm was better.) Anyways, before you keep buying out the Jotspots of this world, Google, make sure the ads you can serve on them will be relevant.
1) You're big, arrogant, and your algorithms are such a mess that you're likely to rank this post #1 for "Google Sucks" by the time I'm done promoting this.
SEO Montreal is a Montreal-based local Search Engine Optimization consulting company. Nous sommes une agence spécialisée dans le référencement. It is part of the SEO ROI family.
