google search result question

Hello everyone this is my first post but I have a question which is probably obvious to everyone but here goes

does anyone know why on certain google searches the top natural result can sometimes have more information e.g. page links with the site. For example if you type national lottery (on google uk) in the search the first natural result is of course the national lottery website but underneath the title and description it shows other page links from the site in 2 columns.

I've seen other examples of this but it seems a bit arbitrary. It look like it is how close the search term is to the domain but there must be more to it than that.

Any ideas?

 

Those are called sitelinks, they are generated by Google. They happen when Google makes them happen, so the best way to do it is to have a well internal link structure.

 

Thanks for your explanation. I was als wondering about that some time.

 

No problem, in Google Webmasters Central you can find a section all about them.

 

Do you have to be a very popular website for google to do that, or are there ways of getting google to do that to your site if its top?

 

Interesting - thanks for the replies. Read that section. Something to think about.