Google Sub-Links?

Snippets, if you will. Google has been testing these additional site link snippets for about a year, in fact, almost exactly a year. In that time, many webmasters have questioned what the requirements are to get these link snippets on their #1 Google listing.

Even when M. Cutts reported on his blog about them, a conspiracy theory ramble started about how to get these nifty elements added.

Is it only for large sites? What about heavily trafficked sites? Both of these theories were proven wrong through other tests.

What about PageRank numbers? Nope, try again.

There was even a theory about using Google Toolbar data, which Matt kinda shot down, but did say they wouldn’t rule out the use of it in the future.

Matt did say in his original blog post that it was purely algorithmic. “The algorithms pick the sites where this could be helpful,” Matt stated. This immediately made me think of the “I’m Feeling Lucky” principle. That being, if Google thinks you are trying to find a specific site, they’ll give you the snippets to navigate into the site immediately without having to go in through the homepage. It makes complete sense for Google to do this, as they’ve always been on a mission of improving their user’s experience.

The SEW Blog provides a few rules, one being:

“…snippet links are displayed for the top result for a ‘brand’ search or ‘domain’ search. (For example, ‘zappos’ and ‘zappos shoes’)”

I’m not completely convinced that this rule is true from the results I received. Some of my own testing with very specific brand and domain searches yielded the result I wanted at the top, but I wasn’t given any link snippets.

I have to believe Google is still working the bugs out of this one, as after a year of positive feedback from the internet community they still haven’t implemented it on every first place search result. We have to simply be patient with Google as always and they’ll give us what we want.