Improved Google Sitelinks Search Box

You may have noticed a new and improved Google sitelinks search box.

What is it all about?

When displayed, the sitelinks search box will make it easier for users to access specific content on a  website, directly through its site-search pages.

1. What is this improved Google search box?

When users search for a company by name they might actually be looking for a specific product or service provided by the company on the website.

In the past, when Google algorithms recognized this, they displayed a larger set of sitelinks and an additional search box below that search result. This which let users do “site:” searches over the site straight from the results, for example [site:example.com digital marketing].

2. When and where does it appear for my site?

This search box is now more prominent above the sitelinks, and if you use the right markup, this will send the user directly to your website’s own search pages.

3. How can I markup my site?

You need to have a working site-specific search engine for your site. If you already have one, you can markup your homepage as a schema.org/WebSite entity with the potentialAction property of the schema.org/SearchAction markup. You can use JSON-LD, microdata, or RDFa to do this; check out the full implementation details on the developer site.

If you implement the markup correctly on your site, users will have the ability to jump directly from the sitelinks search box to your site’s search results page. If there is no markup, they will be shown a Google search results page for the corresponding “site:” query, as Google have done until now.

Contact the team by phone on (01) 808 1301, or email us at info@emarkable.ie