Google's 12 Sitelink Experiment Returns

Aug 5, 2011 at 3:03pm ET by Matt McGee

Google is once again testing — or continuing to test — a jumbo-sized search result that displays a whopping 12 sitelinks below the main/top search result. Here’s one example of how it looks:

google-12-sitelinks

That’s an image posted yesterday by Seer Interactive, where their blog post has additional screenshots showing 12 sitelinks for queries such as “whitehouse” and “city of philadelphia.” Chris Barr also posted about this earlier today with a screenshot for the query “Taradel” (a printing company).

But the test actually dates back to at least April, when it was noticed on WebmasterWorld and discussed for about a week.

In all of the screenshots and examples that searchers have posted, the dozen sitelinks only show up on specific entity-related queries such as the exact company/organization/location name or its exact URL.

At the moment, I’m not able to trigger the experiment in either Firefox or Safari.

Postscript: See Official: Google Sitelinks Expands To 12 Pack.

About The Author: Matt McGee is Editor-In-Chief of Search Engine Land. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. You can read Matt's disclosures on his personal blog. See more articles by Matt McGee

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http://www.gamerstube.com Joe Youngblood

saw this yesterday on a search for JC Penney. if you do that search and get the 12 links you’ll notice that their links take up the entire page (1440×900) because they also have a beefed up ad on top.
http://www.thecopywritingconsultant.com chrisbarr804

Thanks for the mention, Matt. Keep up the great work here!
http://jacques.corbytue.ch Jacques Corby-Tuech

Just noticed these for one of my gaming sites, which you can see if you search for “gaminglove” or “gaming love” the first shows 6 sitelinks, the latter 8. This using the Opera browser as well, which has recently finally decided to start showing +1 buttons as well.