What are sitelinks?

The forms they take

• Expanded sitelinks: a block of links, each with a short description, under the first result for a brand search. They take up a large share of the screen, which pushes competing results down.
• One-line sitelinks: a row of a few text links under an ordinary result, for any query. These often point to pages or to sections within the page.

The sitelinks search box, a search field that used to appear inside the block, has been retired. SearchAction markup no longer produces it.

Sitelinks in search ads are a different thing. Advertisers configure those by hand in their ad account.

How Google decides

Google's documentation says it shows sitelinks only when it thinks they will be useful to the searcher, and that it derives them from an analysis of the site's link structure. If the structure does not let its systems find good candidates, or the candidates are not relevant to the query, none are shown.

The practices Google lists for improving them are plain site hygiene:

• page titles and headings that are informative, relevant and compact;
• a logical structure that is easy to navigate, with important pages linked from other relevant pages;
• internal link anchor text that is concise and describes the target;
• no repetition in your content.

A site needs to be the clear top result for its own name before expanded sitelinks appear, so new sites and sites with generic names often see none.

Influencing which pages appear

You cannot pick sitelinks. You can shift the odds.

1. Put your key pages in the main navigation with short, literal labels: "Pricing", not "Find the plan that fits".
2. Give each key page a distinct title and H1 that match its menu label. If the menu says "Plans", the title says "Pricing" and the heading says "Choose your subscription", Google has three names to choose from.
3. Link to those pages from the homepage body as well as the menu.
4. Keep one URL per page, with redirects and canonical tags settling the duplicates.
5. Provide an XML sitemap so all important pages are known.

An unwanted sitelink is handled at the page. Google removed the old "demote" setting from Search Console years ago. If a page should not be in search at all, such as an old campaign page, add noindex or delete it. If it is merely a poor choice, reduce its internal prominence and improve the titles of the pages you prefer.

In-page sitelinks

For long articles, Google sometimes shows links that jump to sections of the page. These come from the page's headings and the fragment anchors on them. A clear heading hierarchy and a table of contents with stable anchor IDs make it more likely, with no guarantee.

A WordPress checklist

• Under Appearance → Menus, or the Navigation block, keep the primary menu to the pages that matter and label them plainly.
• Check that the homepage title is the brand name first, since sitelinks hang off the brand result. The related label above the result is the site name.
• Noindex thin archives you do not want surfaced, such as author or date archives on a single-author site.
• Add jump links to long posts. Hydrogen SEO's Table of Contents block builds them from headings.
• Use breadcrumbs so the hierarchy is explicit; see breadcrumbs.

Then search for your brand name in a private window from time to time. Sitelinks change as Google recrawls, and a wrong one is usually a hint that a page title or menu label is unclear.