What are sitelinks?

Sitelinks, the term Google also uses in its English documentation, appear beneath the main result for a website and work as shortcuts to relevant pages on the same domain. Google shows them above all when search intent is navigational, that is, when someone types a brand or domain name and expects to land on a specific section rather than the home page.

They are worth separating from other elements that occupy the same area of the SERP. Breadcrumbs show the hierarchical path of a single URL and replace the address line, whereas here we are talking about several different URLs grouped under one result. Rich results depend on structured data declared by the publisher; in this case no markup activates them. The knowledge panel is a separate box that can sit alongside them on the same screen.

Two presentations show up in practice. For brand queries, Google may unfold a block of several links with a title and, at times, a short description. For informational queries it usually shows a compact row of two to four links under the result, without descriptions and with far less space. This second variant is the more frequent one and does not require the site to be a well-known brand.

Google generates them automatically. Its systems analyse the link structure of the site to find shortcuts that save the user time, and the official documentation is explicit: they only appear when the search engine considers them helpful. If the architecture does not allow clear sections to be identified, or if the query does not fit, the result is served without them.

The signals feeding that selection are the same ones that govern normal rankings. What counts is which pages the site links from its navigation and home page, the anchor text it uses, how titles and headings are written, and which pages actually answer the query. No type of structured data produces sitelinks, and there is no tag for requesting them.

The selection also depends on the specific query. The same URL may show one set of links for a brand search and a different set, or none at all, for a generic search. That is why their presence varies across languages, devices and moments, without anything having changed on the site.

The search box deserves a separate clarification, because a lot of outdated information is still circulating. Google announced the retirement of the sitelinks search box on 21 October 2024 and carried it out from 21 November 2024 across all languages and regions. On 29 November 2024 it removed the documentation for that markup and archived the nositelinkssearchbox rule. The old code no longer generates anything, although leaving it in the template causes no errors either.

The decision that depends on this element is not how to switch it on, but where to invest. Since no markup or setting triggers them, any budget aimed at «getting sitelinks» turns into architecture work: stable navigation, titles that describe the section, and coherent internal linking. That work pays off even when the block never appears.

On brand queries the block takes up vertical space that would otherwise be available to competitors, comparison sites or third-party results talking about the company. It also shifts the entry point. A user landing on the pricing or support page skips the home page, and that affects both how the analytics read and how those destination pages should be designed.

The uncomfortable part is that Google picks the set. If the block shows a legal notice, a tag archive or an old version of a product, the architecture is sending signals that do not match the commercial priority. That symptom works as a diagnosis of the internal structure rather than as an isolated fault of the search engine.

• Write unique, descriptive titles and headings in every important section, because that is where the labels Google reuses as link text come from.
• Keep the main navigation stable and short, with the sections that genuinely matter to the business, rather than a menu that changes with every template or campaign.
• Use short, specific internal anchor text pointing to those sections, and apply the same criterion on the home page, in the footer and inside content.
• Resolve duplicates with canonical tags and stable URLs: if the same section lives at three addresses, the signal is split and none of them stands out.
• Review the SERP for your own brand each quarter in incognito mode and on mobile, and compare it against the brand queries in Search Console.
• Give candidate sections their own content and real inbound links, instead of an empty bridge page created only to fill a slot.

• Adding or keeping the search box markup while waiting for it to appear: it was retired on 21 November 2024 and its documentation disappeared on 29 November 2024.
• Looking for the demotion tool in Search Console. Google removed it in October 2016 and has not brought it back.
• Applying noindex casually to get rid of an unwanted link. It is one of the routes Google documents, but it takes the whole page out of search, so the cost almost always outweighs the benefit.
• Reading the absence of the block as a penalty. It is a per-query decision, not a sanction and not an indexing fault.
• Inflating the menu and footer with dozens of links on the assumption that this creates more candidates. It dilutes the signals and makes it harder for any one section to stand out.