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Google SiteLinks search boxes revisited.

Posted on 12th March 2008 at 10:46 pm by Manley

Last week we were observing search boxes within Google SiteLinks.

Now that Google has announced that this feature is fully rolled out across Datacenters, it is worth looking at why some sites have them and whether they are a feature that is worth having.

Following my post on search boxes within Google SiteLinks last week, Google has announced that this feature will now continue to feature for selected sites.

As more examples of sites with the SiteLinks search box were observed the likelihood of genericism being a factor diminished. Tesco, John Lewis and Waitrose have SiteLinks search boxes, Sainsburys do not, Audi have a SiteLinks search box, but Citroën, Volkswagen, Toyota and Ford are all without. The BBC and The Independant go without, where a search for The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian and, most tellingly, The Sun all return this new SiteLinks feature.

The Google announcement states that sites are provided with a search box when there is a:

"high probability that a user wants more refined search results within a specific site"

The suggestion is that implicit user data analysis is carried out to determine how often users perform a more complex search, after searching just for a brand name. I know that I personally often search for [{keyword} wikipedia] in Google, rather than using Wikipedia's own search facility, and indeed Wikipedia is a site for which a search box is provided.

So the next question has to be 'How do I get a site search box under my Google SiteLinks?'. Tin hat theories surrounding Google Checkout, Google Search Appliances, XML sitemaps, AdWords accounts and the like aside, it seems to be that Google is merely providing a service to fulfil a perceived need. If users navigate directly from Google to your site then your SiteLinks are unlikely to feature a search box. If users typically search inside your site using Google, whether this be because of the persona of your user base or perhaps a poor internal search, then it may well be a feature.

This is a very useful addition to Google SiteLinks and I am glad to see it being fully rolled out. From a user perspective they save time but for websites? With the sheer wealth of user data which Google has to draw from, the chances are that if a SiteLinks search box is going to benefit your traffic then you will have one and if your users prefer to navigate from within your site then you will not.

For once it looks very much as though everybody wins.

Rishil has written an excellent blog post on SEO Smarty, investigating ways in which the Google SiteLinks search box could have a negative effect on those sites who heavily invest in their brand trademark.

Rishil walks the reader through a specific search query and highlights inappropriate results and increased exposure to competitors' sites over a listing with standard Google SiteLinks and it is well worth a read.

File under: google sitelinks