I have been studying the sitelink issue to figure out when google sitelink bot decides to show these extra links for a site. I have come out with the following notes and I thought I should share them with you. The main factor is how many searches are done for your site name compared to the total searches. There are many terms which lead visitors to your site. If "your site name" lies in the top 5 terms that lead them to your site, you are on your way to have sitelinks. I have a site that people reach by searching for its name in google. This name is the second most used term for it. Although there are only 150 visits for this term, the site has sitelinks. I have seen this with many other sites as well. This, in fact, makes sense. If a site is popular (many searches), then if google is sure that a visitor is searching for it now, it will be useful to show the inner links as well. How will google know if people are really searching for it? When they search for its name. The second factor, which is not less important, is how stable your link structure is. You have many sections and links on your site. If you keep them as they are for a while (several weeks), then you are on your way as well. From my experience, it took google a month to decide that for my site. There is a point at which google starts watching to consider adding sitelinks to your site. I think this point is the number of searches for your site. We can not expect it to show sitelinks for a site that is searched for for 10 or 20 times a day. On the other hand, they are not related to how many incoming links you have. I have seen sitelinks for sites with less than 500 regular backlinks and I have seen it for a site with 27,000 regular backlinks. Also, they are not related to any file (sitemap, robots, etc.) which you many create and place in your root waiting for this. It comes by itself. Hope this helps and everyone who noticed similar issues to add his experience.
Thanks for sharing the info however i tend to disagree. Why? Searches for your site can be automated with a script, plus a bunch of proxies to manipulate the results in to awarding you sitelinks. With all Google's advanced algorithm technologies, there has to be more to it then simply just number of searches. I really believe backlinks and the anchor text to your subpages hold more weight in determining sitelinks then search numbers. There's probably a relationship between % of backlinks to subpages compared to the homepage. Also % of anchor text in a manner of: anchor pointing to domain.com Red - 20% Blue - 20% Green - %20 Black - %20 May equal sitelink awarded as: Domain.com -Domain.com/Red -Domain.com/Blue -Domain.com/Green -Domain.com/Black Another thing to factor is only 1 site will have sitelinks for a given term, so while you might qualify for sitelinks there's another site that qualifies more for the given term.
sweetfunny, V7N don`t have these sitelinks which it have alot of backlinks anchored with the site name! Also, the sitelinks displayed to some "new" subpages for sites had it lately, so the links of subpages not involved in this issue. Lordo, Thanks for sharing and hope you back to Swalif again, I learnt the SEO from your articles there And I believe links from sites have the sitelinks is an important factor.
I guess --sites like DP with Google showing some innerpages are called authority sites. It is extremely hard to become one of them. But if you have achieved that --it means G is treating you site as authority site in your niche. Congrats --and thumbs-up
Thank you for your reply, sweetfunny. I don't think it is this simple. Google is not a newbie that will be fooled by some fake hits. With their advanced technologies you talk about, descrimination is not difficult. Maybe. I have not noticed or commented anything on how google chooses the sitelinks. I am talking about how it chooses a site to be featured and have sitelinks published. I am observing how it chooses sitelinks nowadays and I will come back with whatever I notice. Yes you are right. And in 98% of the cases, the term is a site's name or a part of a site's name. In the rest 2%, when there is no competition about a term, the winning site will have sitelinks.
Thank you, mhmd, for the reply I tend to agree with what you say about the domain age. I have a site which is qualified -according to my thoughts about the issue- and it has no sitelinks yet maybe because it is new (5 months old only). Will see
Thank you, brokensoft. Thank you I will come back when I am ready, in shaa Allah. The incoming links are what gives the page its strength. So, unless there are many, respectable links from other sites to your page, your page listing will not appear for seachers in the first place - netherless have sitelinks. In other words, yes, the links from other sites are the base of the story.