Bug drops Sitelinks Searchbox from Google search results

Google is working on fixing a bug that has removed the internal site search box that typically appears with some search results snippets.

Google Home Page Ss 1920

A bug in Google has wiped out a search feature that allows searchers to search within a specific site from the Google search result snippets. The feature launched three years ago, and it is officially called a Sitelinks Searchbox, where Google will show a search box directly within a search result snippet, allowing the searcher to restrict their search results to pages within the site listed.

Here is what it looked like on a search for “YouTube” when the feature launched.

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Now, the Sitelinks Searchbox is no longer showing, at least temporarily. RankRanger caught the feature dropping out of Google globally a couple of days ago.

Google Sitelinks Searchbox Bug

Google is working on it, but there is no estimated timeline for a fix to be rolled out.

Postscript: On October 3, 2017 the search box returned to the Google search results.


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About the Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

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