On the 6th of July I accidentally came across (what could be any time soon) Google's new tabular mega sitelinks. They became available to me purely by coincidence but the unique opportunity to see something which was unavailable to most searchers was more than welcome.
I must admit that I instantly found the tabbed sitelinks very appealing, straightforward and easy to use. I instantly started testing several search queries and ended up writing up a post on the benefits of tabbed sitelinks for brands if Google (ever) decides to roll them out the same way as they appeared on my screen.
Even though I was aware that Google was testing some sort of tabular sitelinks format, the privilege of having a first-hand experience was greatly appreciated. Despite Google's confirmation that this as a test, I thought sharing some screenshots and thoughts of what could be (sooner or later) the new sitelinks, would be beneficial to everyone (including Google). Therefore, any comments, feedback and insights are more than welcome.
What Has Changed
This could be the biggest change Google has ever made into brand listings appearing in the SERPs after introducing the expanded site links (mega sitelinks). Currently, brand listings consist of up to six sitelinks excluding the standard link to the site's homepage.
However, in the new version there are from five to nine tabs, each one containing from four to 13 sitelinks. That means that the number of linked pages appearing in the SERPs would drastically increase, which would definitely impact brand traffic metrics in various ways.
This is how the SEOmoz listing appears with the new tabbed layout:
Note how similar the sitelinks that appear in the 'Top Links' tab are to those in the previous non-tabbed version:
However, the interesting stuff appears when clicking on any of the other tabs - let's take a look at the 'Blogs' tab:
In this particular case the blog's text snippet is being pulled in from the page's meta description. However, this is not always the case as we will see later in other examples.
The 'Blog' tab consists of four links:
- A link to the main blog
- A link to the Rand's post '21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic'
- A link to YouMoz
- A link to the second page of the main blog.
What really stands out like a sore thumb is Rand's post, published in January 2012, which I presume is one of the most popular posts on the blog with thousands of visits and pageviews, good dwell time and excellent user engagement and social signals.
As one would expect, the post has attracted a very high number of links from hundreds of different domains. Presumably, the post is one of the most linked posts on SEOmoz but Rand and his team would know a lot more on this. Open Site Explorer reports the following astonishing link popularity and social metrics:
Majestic SEO fresh index metrics are also in agreement but it is difficult to say whether links to this post are the most authoritative and trusted ones compared to those pointing to other blog posts on SEOmoz. Nevertheless, link equity must have played a part in making the post appear as a sitelink in the 'Blog' tab.
Moving on to the 'SEO Tools' tab, the user comes across four sitelinks:
Again, the user can now access directly from Google's SERPs pages that before would require a few clicks and a bit of fiddling around with the site's navigation bar. It seems like Google's intention is to offer a better user experience by reducing the time users need to reach popular deep pages.
Many users search for a brand's name in Google, only because they are interested in a particular service or product. Making a high number of popular pages available in the search results will certainly speed up the user journey as users won't need to spend time browsing within a site, trying to find their way towards the page they are after.
Arguably, the bounce rate on pages appearing in sitelinks will increase but at the same time sitelinks should drive higher quality traffic, potentially increasing user engagement and conversion as more users will be able to quickly land on the pages they desire. However, this will shift a great portion of traffic from the homepage to other pages on a site, essentially breaking the standard user journey into many shorter ones. The number of one page visits will also have a negative impact on the average time on page/site. When a user visits just one page and then leaves the site, the time on page will be shown as zero, which highlights the need to pay more attention to dwell time.
Consequently, this would lead to new strategic decisions in terms of information architecture, content structure and internal linking as the number of deeper pages operating as entry points to the site, will increase.
News Sites
Looking at websites from the news sector, the various tabs provide quick access to various popular pages and sections on a news site. For instance, the 'Sport' tab that appears on the BBC listing, offers users with instant access to several popular sports in the UK. Trying to access any of those pages (e.g. the football hub page) from the site's homepage would require more effort and time, especially if the user is new to the site.
It is very likely the overall number of pageviews on the BBC homepage will drop but for a good reason as more users will be driven directly to the specific pages they are looking for. This could have a negative impact on the overall number of pageviews on the BBC website, as fewer pages will be visited for navigational purposes only. For news sites where pageviews are often used as the main KPI, this will need to be addressed.
Another good example of how the tabular format enhances the user experience, is the following one for the Elle UK magazine. For those who are unfamiliar with the magazine, the tabs (below) could quickly provide an overview of what (Google thinks) the content of the site is about:
Note how easily users can instantly navigate to the various pages within the horoscopes section and read about their daily, monthly or yearly horoscopes. In this case, Google has correctly pulled the six sitelinks from the main subcategories that appear on the horoscopes' page of Elle UK.
Interestingly, the equivalent tab on Elle.com is called 'Astrology' and on this occasion the sitelinks consist of the daily/weekly/monthly horoscopes, as well as links to three individual horoscopes:
It would be interesting to know if Capricorn, Cancer and Pisces are the three most common horoscopes in the US but the bottom line is that webmasters should be able to update their sites' sitelinks so they include what is really useful to their audience, rather than what Google's algorithm decides is best.
In the following example, Google's choices in the 'Fashion' tab have been very poor.
Browsing the fashion page makes it clear that Trends and News are two very useful subsections to include in the sitelinks but all other sitelinks do not seem to make much sense.
Below is another good example where Google's algorithm does not offer the best available information to the user. The text snippet that appears in the 'Magazine' tab is not fed by the page's meta description, but by some text that appears in the page' source code, which is not even visible to the user when the page loads. Definitely, 'The Making of Christopher Kane' is not the best phrase to describe what the magazine is about.
The New York Times appears with nine tabs, which is not very common but it seems to be due to the short category names Google has chosen to display in the tabs:
Ecommerce Sites
The potential of the new sitelinks format for Ecommerce sites is enormous. Popular categories can acquire their own tabs, and popular subcategories can become more visible, increasing user click-through and traffic to those deeper pages. On the other hand, digital marketers would need to adapt their online content strategies accordingly as the user journey for many users will become shorter.
With the new sitelinks the number of users bypassing the homepage will increase, therefore things like offers and special deals would need to become prominent in the deeper pages too. Of course this is not something new, but will definitely carry more weight after the tabular sitelinks are rolled out.
The following screenshot is a very good example of the new traffic opportunities that open up for LG UK from different product ranges that appear in the 'Appliances' tab:
Without any doubt, the above format is more user friendly compared to the previous sitelinks format (below) as it provides several navigational paths into six different appliance types.
What is also interesting is the number of sitelinks a tab can contain. In the following example, the 'TVs' tab for LG UK includes 10 sitelinks altogether, pointing to a combination of category and product pages.
On the other hand, looking at a similar tab on Comet, there seems to be quite a few issues, probably due to Google's interpretation of the site's structure and internal linking:
Note that:
- The description of the tab includes file locations from the page's source code, which is not useful to users
- The product titles are far too long, resulting in just three product pages appearing as sitelinks
As it has already been mentioned, with the use of tabs in sitelinks, the number of pages that become available to users can increase significantly. The tabular listing of the Next retail site consists of eight tabs and an outstanding number of 53 sitelinks in total.
Note that the 'Men' tab alone contains 10 sitelinks, although one of them has been truncated in a rather odd way making it impossible to read.
On the other hand, in the following tab from the Marks & Spencer's listing there is room for more sitelinks in the 'Food & Wine' tab. Alsom the populated sitelinks do not seem as the most representative ones for the Food & Wine section.
Harrods get awarded six and much more relevant sitelinks into their 'Food & Wine' tab.
Wouldn't Marks & Spencer's like to be able to amend their sitelinks so they can better reflect the products available within the Food & Wine section?
The maximum number of sitelinks in one tab I came across is 13 as in the following example:
Travel Sites
Brands within the travel sector are also very likely to benefit from the new sitelinks layout as the most popular services and destinations are likely to appear as individual tabs. Users starting their journey from the site's homepage, would need more time and effort to access those pages. This is how users interested in P&O Cruises can get a quick glimpse of the main boats as well as links to specific sections for each boat.
For each one of the most popular boats, there is a dedicated tab offering several options such as information about the cabins and decks, reviews and access to webcams.
Google offer a very similar user experience for the Ventura and Queen Mary 2 cruise ships even though they belong to totally different sites.
However, Google is still testing the tabbed sitelinks layout which certainly has quite a few flaws and isn't ready yet. Browsing Easyjet's sitelinks from within the UK, one of the tabs appeared in German although all other tabs appeared in English.
Conclusion
It will be very interesting to see whether and when the sitelinks tabs will start appearing in the SERPs for everyone. The new layout should help users navigate sites more easily and quickly too as it provides an increased number of shortcuts to a site. It seems that with this update Google is trying to address common usability and site performance issues, aiming to improve the overall user experience allowing searchers to quickly find what they are looking for.
As some of the previous examples demonstrate, some of the tabs and sitelinks Google offers by default are not always useful. Even though such issues may be caused by a site's structure and internal linking, there needs to be a better way for webmasters to influence how sitelinks appear in Google's SERPs. Demoting sitelinks URLs via Webmaster Tools won't be enough to offer a great user experience. Introducing extra functionality in Webmaster Tools, so webmasters can work more on their own sitelinks, would be more beneficial. Alternatively, some special HTML markup could be used.
As already discussed, the new, tabbed mega sitelinks will almost certainly affect several analytics metrics and the impact will be bigger on those sites with higher volumes of branded traffic. For more information on how the new sitelink format could affect traffic, pageviews, bounce rate and other areas, please refer to the '10 Ways Tabular Site Links Could Affect Online Businesses'.
Note: I would like to thank my colleagues Adam Skalak, Luke Smith and Allyson James for their valuable comments and feedback, which have definitely influenced parts of both posts.
im not sure how this benefits the user apart from saving a single click. i'd rather navigate through a sites own menu to find what I want.
i'd also imagine it as a negative for the website - you put all your offers, promotions, latest news etc... on your homepage and people will miss out on that.
I think it can save more than a single click, depending on how deep the page apearing in a sitelinks sits. Saving a couple of clicks may not sound like a massive benefit but don't you think that speed is also important?
1-2 clicks can sometimes take 10-20 seconds until the user has reached the final destination page so from that perspective the tabbed sitelinks can be quite beneficial.
Also, navigating through a site is not always a pleasant experience if there are usability issues (poor navigation, site architecture or internal linking) and I think with the tabbed sitelinks Google try to address this too.
It still seems as though this could decrease CTR because the user already sees most of what you have to offer without even visiting the site. On this other hand, if you have something they want they will click through anyway, and if you don't have what they want, they would have left your site either way. I guess I can see this having more benefits than downsides.
For big sites the user would only get an idea of the most popular sections but nothing more than that. Don't forget that these would only appear for brand searches, so in most cases the user intent is already there.
Oh, duh! I don't know how I managed to forget that!
yeah you're right, it could save more than just one click. but if they come to your homepage YOU decide what you want to highlight for the visitor.
using those tabs, google decides whats "best" for your visitor.
which would you prefer? I know what I want my visitors to see better than google does. if you have an ecommerce site especially, i'd worry about google showing old / out of stock products on that menu.
I hope you can control what tabs appear or turn them off entirely.
I think, eventually, landing pages will receive even more attention from site owners. On the other hand, there are no guarantees users will enter a site from the homepage, whether Google rolls out the tabbed sitelinks or not.
Certainly, having full (or some) control over the tabbed sitelinks is a feature all site owners and SEOs would like to see.
Another way for Google to have visitors spend more time on their site.
Great overview. I wonder if the companies whose revenue stream is pageview based (e.g. newspapers) will be upset about this. As you write, it will save the users some clicks and hence page views.
Seems like a good move by Google though.
I had a similar thought. It seems the tabs will be deliver the user to their destination quicker, leading to more time spent on the Goog and less time within a website.
Personally, I'd appreciate a standardized way to quickly browse a site before I make a decision to click over to it.
I don't understand why Google would select categories for you. IMO this should be the users decision, after all the user knows what his market wants best. If Google gives some of my sites I am working on poor sitelinks I would rather disable them.
I wonder if Google is going to pick the categories that it displays based on user search behaviors, kind of like it does its current search results.
I agree that I would want to be able to correct poor site links as well. Google should not have the final say so.
Looks like position #1 will have even more screen real estate, and more compelling reasons to click / interact with those tabbed results. Haven't seen any in the wild myself, yet.
Exactly how is this good for anyone except the site that ranks 1. Just another way for Google to push spots 2 onwards further down the page, so what do people see. Adwords Adwords and Adwords as there only other alternative to click on. Choice with Google is a thing of the past.
Great post modesto. Looking forward for this change from Google. I wonder whether they will roll this out or not.
hi Modesto Siotos.. great post indeed.. i think you are the first one who bring this out online and get great opportunity to test it.
it seems like useful if it's implement but do you have any idea on WBT side? i mean will they provide the same tabs to remove unwanted site links from WBT? as IF i don't want to promote log in page in first tabe will i able to remove it from the list from WBT? any idea on this ?
It is praiseworthy that Google is embedding more and more rich snippets to their search results. I would welcome and appreciate this move from Google with open arms and hope this will add some value to users and search as well. Again Hats off to this great analysis and thoughts.
Uh! it will be more interesting update from Google, If Google will decide to roll out it. It will be wide advantages for Brands. But it will be more complicated update for webmasters where demote of links will be complicated issue.
Thanks for making aware us with update of meta tabular change steps..!
I like this new format. I have recently revamped my main site and have high hopes Google will consider it friendly to the tabbed format.
This is very interesting and thank you Modesto for your time to compile this data.
Have anyway seen it with the tabs linking to subdomains?
No, I haven't seen sitelinks in tabs linking to subdomains. So far the tabbed sitelinks I've come across appear only on www subdomains.
I am all of it as long as its limited to brand search . I would assume that is going to be the case. Like Modesto pointed out . It's crucial to let webmasters demote links which they feel are not a good fit for their site .
Thumbs up to Modesto for catching on to this .. I have never seen it myself.
Thanks for the detailed sneak peak.
As a few others have pointed out, what I'd really like to see from Google is the greater ability to shape the sitelinks (tabbed or regular). Sitelinks can vary depending on the query, and Google does provide the ability for site owners to "attempt" to remove (unfortunately Google may or may not actually honor that request and continues to believe they understand a site better than the site owner does) them, but that isn't enough, especially if they don't always honor demotion requests.
They will probably never allow site owners to select specific links for specific pages or queries, but I'd hope that someday site owners will at least be able to assign some priority to pages for consideration in sitelinks. Then, Google could at least factor that in with their other signals and perhaps achieve and even better user experience by working with the site owners, who are just as if not more vested in that user experience as Google is.
Really interesting article Modesto :-) with a lot of good takeaways, thank you :-) Much more focus will be needed on proper navigation and deeper pages 'as landing pages', which should be set up anyway... but that is not always the case.
Good post, Modesto. I have been looking at Google tabbed sitelinks, and in fact when I look up my company sitelinks appear - although not the ones I would have chosen. Will this change over time and do I have any input over which sitelinks show? I have included your post in 'Best of the Web' https://j3webmarketing.com/best-web so others can also benefit from your post. Thank you.
I think one will be able to at least point Google in the right direction by using microdata. Check out schema dot org.
This is Such an Awesome & Appreciable Site link display of Google SERP. in Last, google only show upto 7 link on google SERP but Now Google gave this wow class feature that will hike the percentage of any business. today when i was searching something then i found this Tabbed Site link in one cars company.
Please tell me this feature will automatically display or we should do any setting for this.
Very interesting stuff Modesto. I wonder if we will see it roll out worldwide any time soon? Would love to see it on Google Australia!
No, I haven't seen sitelinks in tabs linking to subdomains. So far the tabbed sitelinks I've come across appear only on www subdomains.
Very interesting post Modesto. Great way to take advantage of the opportunity. This could reduce pages visited and time on site. Would be interesting to see what happens.
As a search engine user I think this is a fantastic addition!
However, as an SEO I feel that it may have some adverse effects. In addition to the fact that sites that generate revenue via page views, I think that this would also cause issues for a wide range of sites as a lot of key pages will be skipped by users jumping to the page that they feel best suits their needs and missing other offers. This could result in a loss of earnings for ecommerce sites that in some cases rely on impulse purchases.
There are definitely some concerns as the ones you've pointed out. The update will probably cut short the user journey for visitors coming from branded navigational queries.
I guess site owners will have to redefine the way they merchandise but definitely having some control over the tabs and sitelinks would help.
Google should also provide a tracking mechanism to know the CTR of a link on a particular tab So that we could modify accordingly either unwanted tab/link appearance in serp page or content/layout/interlinking/other changes of the page with respect to high CTR in order to maximize our return from that particular landing page.
Great stuff! Appreciate the effort to explain in detail. When I saw first I actually was little confused about this sitelinks. Thanks for sharing.
I just love that Google is embedding more and more rich data in their search results. Although I would have preferred a little more control over the contents of this new development, I still welcome it with open arms.
Big thanks to the author for the swift analysis.
Hey Modesto,
Great post and thanks for your analysis.
Do you think that Schemas will influence how the sitelinks are populated in future? For the e-commerce example that you showed, it would be good to see some reviews and star-ratings.
Great question Jason.
I guess only Google would be able to answer this but let's hope it is something they're working on already.
Very cool, can't wait to see them in the wild.
Nice post Modesto. There's clearly a problem with Google identifying site-links correctly, although they don't do a bad job, several of my sites have weirdly truncated links which don't really relate to the actual link.
I agree that webmasters should be able to change site links where appropriate; perhaps only on sites which their algorithms "trust" to begin with. Could help improve searching no end.
I love the sneak peek. I just did a start from scratch rebuild of my main site and I am now quite curious as to how it would be assimilated in this new presentation of search results. I believe my site's reorganization would be perfect for the tabbed format. I hope they move forward with it.
It wouldn't quite be as good as hitting the lottery, but I sure would take more traffic.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, great early find on a Google change. This one really looks good for users Google and Bing are really starting to step thier Game up for user experience.
Sorry if I missed something you already posted but how is it that you got to see this experimental feature? Are you signed up to participate in their beta testing or something?
Pure luck! It just appeared one day on my Firefox browser, while Chrome and IE were still showing the standard sitelinks.
I saw this yesterday and was surprised and played around with them a little bit. I thinks it's a good idea but i'm not sure if I'll actually use them. Great post though.
Its will increase bounce rate but user will get an overview in very short period .But i dont thing it wiil be good experiance
Very interesting post Modesto and a great spot - always good to be forewarned about new enhancements from Google. More importantly thanks for sharing with the community - excellent stuff!
Thanks for the comprehensive post, Modesto. Google continues to push real organic results below the fold for many queries while striving to keep more searchers on its own pages. If these mega site links are displayed on mobile searches, it doesn't bode well for click-through rates. I'll be looking forward to some serious CRO and landing page optimization testing if these tabs are eventually rolled out.
Fantastic! I really hope that this get's implemented it definitely beat's the bog standard layout of the sub pages at present.I wonder what will be next.
Karl
GetMediaWise
[link removed]
I'm just concern that this will - yet again decrease the average visit time on site since the users can land directly to the page that matched their exact search query, I just hope there's something good will come out of this for us web owners
Thank you, nice post,and seriously man, I do appreciate all the research into this one. Best,
Vijay @gunshotdigital
After seeing this new enhancement to come on Google SERP, it's clear that Google is going to increase the engagement to its own site and for the site specific to any result will only be clicked out if it contains exactly what the user is looking for. It may increase or decreased traffic to the site. If your site ranked with this mega site links on top, there are chances to be viewed more pages by pages, on the other hand it may be ignored if it does not pull proper site links.
Thanks for the in-depth analysis!
I think it's a win-win for both Google and its users. Users who use navigational queries can (potentially) get to their desired page(s) within the site, while Google at the same time profits from them staying longer in the SERPs.
Google has update new sitelink, I thinks it will best for end user
Very good writeup on an interesting subject. Thanks for sharing!