Weekly SEO news: 20 July 2010

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

When Google displays Sitelinks below your website listing in the search results, it's very likely that your website will get more clicks and more visitors. This week's article explains how to check your Sitelinks and how to make sure that Google displays the right Sitelinks for your website.

In the news: the latest search engine statistics, Yahoo is testing Bing results, Google acquires Metaweb to improve the search results, Google is a powerful player in the political world and more.

Table of contents:

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

Best regards,
Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO
1. Does Google show the right Sitelinks type for your website?

When Google displays Sitelinks below your website listing in the search results, it's very likely that your website will get more clicks and more visitors. The majority of searchers click on the top 3 results. For that reason, getting more links in the top three results increases the number of clicks that your website will get.

Unfortunately, Google does not always display the right Sitelinks. This article explains how to check your Sitelinks and how to make sure that Google displays the right Sitelinks for your website.

How to check which Sitelinks Google displays for your website

Google robot

It seems that Google only return Sitelinks when they are confident that the search query is looking for a specific site.

If you want to see the Sitelinks for your website, search Google for your domain name without the .com or for any other keyword for which your website is listed on the first position.

For example, if your domain name is "bluewidgets.com", search Google for "bluewidgets".

Which type of Sitelinks does Google display for your website?

If you search Google as explained above, Google will display one of the following Sitelinks below your listing:

  1. Google shows up to eight text links that are identical to your website navigation links. If you see these links, the navigation of your website can be parsed by Google and it divides your website into separate categories. This is good.

  2. Sitelinks that go to random pages on your website. If you get these links, the navigation of your website probably can't be parsed by Google and Google took the pages with the most backlinks for the Sitelinks. This is not so good.

  3. Google does not display any Sitelinks. If Google does not display any Sitelinks for your website then it's very likely that your website is not search engine friendly and that your pages cannot be parsed correctly. This is bad.

How to get better Sitelinks

Google generates the Sitelinks for your website based on your website navigation and based on the links that point to your website.

If Google shows the wrong Sitelinks or no Sitelinks at all for your website then you should work on your website navigation:

  • Avoid JavaScript and Flash navigation and try to use regular <a href> links as often as possible.

  • If you use images for your website navigation, make sure that the images contain alternative texts that allow Google to categorize your links.

If your website has a clear navigation, it will be much easier to get Sitelinks for your website.

Do not use too many navigation links and make it easy for web surfers and search engines to find out which pages of your website are the most important pages. The better a web page is linked, the more likely it is that it will appear in the Sitelinks.

Sitelinks can make your website listings on Google's result pages more attractive. However, they have nothing to do with the position that your website gets in Google. If you want to get high rankings on Google for the keywords of your choice, you must make sure that your website has both optimized content and good backlinks.

Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Statistics June 2010 U.S. search engine rankings

"Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in June with 62.6 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (up 0.6 percentage points to 18.9 percent), and Microsoft Sites (up 0.6 percentage points to 12.7 percent).

Both Yahoo! Sites and Microsoft Sites have experienced gains due in part to the continued utilization of contextual search approaches that tie content and related search results together. [...]

Google Sites accounted for 10.3 billion searches (up 1 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.1 billion (up 7 percent), Microsoft Sites with 2.1 billion (up 8 percent), Ask Network with 584 million (up 1 percent), and AOL LLC with 368 million (up 2 percent)."

Related: Yahoo and Bing legitimately up big



It's official: Yahoo testing Bing results

"Though much of our testing is already happening offline, this month we'll also test the delivery of organic and paid search results provided by Microsoft on live Yahoo! traffic. [...]

Assuming our testing continues to yield high quality results, we anticipate that our organic search results will be powered by Bing beginning in the August/September timeframe."



 Google acquires Metaweb

"Today, we've acquired Metaweb, a company that maintains an open database of things in the world. Working together we want to improve search and make the web richer and more meaningful for everyone. With efforts like rich snippets and the search answers feature, we're just beginning to apply our understanding of the web to make search better."



Amit SinghalGoogle's Amit Singhal tells us about the dreams search engines are made of

"Google's goal is to make all information universally available, and where data isn't just hanging out on the web looking suave, Amit said Google will create it. That's why we have Google Maps, Google Earth and even Google Books. Well, that's the official feelgood version of why we have them."



Google search: political power

"Google’s aggressive tactics have put it on top of the business world, and now the Internet giant is looking to leverage the high profile and sterling connections of its CEO to achieve similar power in the political sphere. [...]

Google has become such a powerful player in the political and business worlds that most people contacted for this story refused to speak on the record about their concerns."

Related: Our op-ed: Regulating what is "best" in search?



Search engine newslets

  • A new design for Google Images.
  • Yahoo adds many new features to Yahoo Answers.
  • What is the benefit of using the change of address tool in Google Webmaster Tools instead of using a 301 redirect? (video)
  • Chinese search engine Baidu mulling Mobile OS.
  • Google ventures-backed Pixazza raises $12 Million for crowdsourced 'AdSense for images'.

Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
3. Success stories

Tell us how IBP helped your business and 250,000 readers will see YOUR website

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

Click here to tell us your story.

Watch the video

IBP

Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

4. Previous articles

Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

Do you have a minute?