New format for Google Sitelinks shows more site content in search results

Google is testing, or maybe rolling out, a new feature in the search results that lets you see more content from a web site without having to click to the site.

Instead of showing normal Sitelinks, which are in the screen shot above on the left, you are presented with more detail Sitelinks, which are shown in the screen shot on the right.

How do these new Sitelinks work? When you are shown the new Sitelinks, they are listed under the main search result snippet with arrows down to expand the results. Here is a closer look:

You can expand the number of sitelinks by clicking on “show more” and/or click on a specific sitelink to see more from the web site directly related to that sitelink directly in the Google results:

How can I see this in action? I was able to replicate this myself by searching for [translate api] while in Chrome in incognito mode. I was not able to replicate this in any other browser. I was given a heads up on this by SEMRush on Twitter.

Why does this matter? This may change your click-through rates from Google search. If Google shows more of your content directly in the search results, it is possible that people may click less or even more. It is hard to say how the click-through rate from Google search will be impacted by this. It is a similar argument to the featured snippets in search, which is what these new snippets look like. Some studies said the featured snippets resulted in gains, while others showed losses.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz 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. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.