Sitelinks are Google's way of letting users know what links could possibly be most relevant to them. They help users find content more quickly. Google implemented search sitelinks to facilitate users and make it easier for them to search for and reach the desired content on your site directly from SERPs. A lot of webmasters miss out on this opportunity though. Compared to other types of markup, implementing search sitelinks is easy. Today, we'll show you how to easily set up yours.
Does your site qualify?
This question isn't easy to answer. Not every site qualifies for the sitelinks search box, and Google isn't overly transparent about the requirements. However, if you can answer "yes" to any of these questions below, it's quite possible your site qualifies.
- Google often sends notifications to verified, eligible sites through Webmaster Tools. Did you ever get one?
- Navigational or branded search traffic - Keyword phrases such as 'mbt' and 'mybloggertricks' send this website thousands of visits. The more the volume of branded search traffic, the likelier the sitelinks search box is to appear
- Try searching for your site using the most common branded and navigational search queries that your visitors might use. If the sitelinks search box already appears, then you most likely qualify to take advantage of adding the SearchAction Schema on your site and directing visitors to your own search results page.
Making use of your internal search engine
Most internal search engines work perfectly fine, including the default WordPress search function. If your website doesn't have internal search, it's easy to get started with a free Google Custom Search engine.
For websites that use Google's default Custom Search engine, Google also has the chance to make money on ad clicks, because the free version of the Customer Search engine includes Google ads. Google offers a paid version known as Site Search that allows an ad-free experience.
Adding the schema
The next step if your site qualifies is to add SearchAction schema markup on your site. Add the following code to your homepage.
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "http://schema.org",
"@type": "WebSite",
"url": "https://www.example.com/",
"potentialAction": {
"@type": "SearchAction",
"target": "https://query.example.com/search?q={search_term_string}",
"query-input": "required name=search_term_string"
}
}
</script>
Make sure to edit the "URL" and "target" fields to match your own website information.
If you implement the markup on your site, users will have the ability to jump directly from the sitelinks search box to your site�s search results page. If Google doesn't find any markup, it'll show them a Google search results page for the corresponding site: query, as it has already done until now.
If you have any questions, you can create a new thread over at our new forum. Good luck :)
