The evolution of sitelinks: expanded and improved

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)



When you’re searching, you often have a specific task in mind, like figuring out which exhibits are showing at a nearby museum. Despite this narrow goal, people often start with a broad query, like [metropolitan museum of art], with no mention of exhibits. For these searches, the first result may include a list of links to specific sections of the site, which are called “sitelinks.” Today, we’re launching several improvements to sitelinks, including the way they look and are organized in search results.

Sitelinks before today’s changes

Sitelinks have been around for a while, but when we first launched them years ago, they were much more limited—a single row of just four links:

It turns out that sitelinks are quite useful because they can help predict which sections of the site you want to visit. Even if you didn’t specify your task in the query, sitelinks help you quickly navigate to the most relevant part of the site, which is particularly handy for large and complex websites. Sitelinks can also give you a good overview of a website's content, and let webmasters expose areas of the site that visitors may not know about.



As it became clear how valuable sitelinks were, we continued to improve their appearance and quality. We rearranged them into a column of links to make them easier to read. We doubled the number of links, creating direct access to more of the site. We started showing sitelinks for more results and we continuously made improvements to the algorithms that generate and rank the links. With each of these changes, people used sitelinks more and more.



That brings us to today’s launch. Sitelinks will now be full-size links with a URL and one line of snippet text—similar to regular results—making it even easier to find the section of the site you want. We’re also increasing the maximum number of sitelinks per query from eight to 12.

Improved sitelinks with URLs and snippet text

In addition, we’re making a significant improvement to our algorithms by combining sitelink ranking with regular result ranking to yield a higher-quality list of links. This reduces link duplication and creates a better organized search results page. Now, all results from the top-ranked site will be nested within the first result as sitelinks, and all results from other sites will appear below them. The number of sitelinks will also vary based on your query—for example, [museum of art nyc] shows more sitelinks than [the met] because we’re more certain you want results from www.metmuseum.org.



These changes will be rolling out globally over the next few days in all supported languages to anyone using a modern browser, such as Chrome, Firefox or IE 7 and above. We hope these changes make it easier and faster for you to reach the information you need.



Posted by Daniel Rocha, Software Engineer, Sitelinks Team

Find more while you browse with Google Related

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and Chrome Blog)



Almost every time I go online, I come across some new topic or item that I’d like to learn more about. Sometimes it’s as simple as the latest buzz on the new shop down the street. Other times it’s something more significant, like a counterpoint to an opinion piece I’m reading. While the answer can be just a simple search away, we wanted to find a way to get some of those answers to you even faster. Now with Google Related, a new Chrome Extension and Google Toolbar feature, you’ll automatically see interesting content relevant to what’s on the page you’re viewing, right where you’re viewing it.

Whether you’re reading a news article, shopping for a new pair of shoes or visiting your favorite musician’s website, Google Related works in the background to find you the most interesting and relevant content on the topics you’re currently viewing. For example, if you visit a restaurant’s website, Related can show you a map, reviews from Google Places, mentions from across the web and other similar eateries that you might want to try.

Results will display in a thin bar at the bottom of your screen, and will remain minimized until you hover over them with your mouse. Once selected, they'll open up immediately in your browser window, saving you the trouble of having to open multiple new windows or tabs. If Google Related shows you something you’re interested in, you can let others know using the built-in +1 button.



In order to offer you relevant suggestions, Related sends the URL and other available information about the pages you visit back to Google. If you’re interested in how that data is used and stored, you can learn more here and here.



If you decide you’d rather not see the Related bar, you can easily hide it for specific pages and sites through the Options menu. If you use Related as part of Google Toolbar, you can disable Related entirely through the Options menu as well.



Google Related is available both as a Chrome Extension in the Chrome Web Store and as a new feature in Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer. Visit www.google.com/related to learn more and to get Google Related today.



Posted by Ran Ben-Yair, Product Manager, Google Related team, Israel R&D Center

The latest update to Google Social Search: Public Google+ Posts

Back in 2009, we launched Google Social Search, and we've made several improvements since then. And earlier this year we made an update which let you get more information from people you're connected to on other publicly available sites. Today, we're including public Google+ posts as well. So if you’re signed into your Google Account, your search results may start including posts shared publicly by people you’re connected to on Google+.



Here’s how it works. Let’s say I’m logged into my Google Account, and I search on Google for [uncle zhou queens]. I’ve heard a lot of great things about this restaurant, and we’re visiting NYC soon, so we want to figure out all the best eats in town. I also happen to have Andrew Hyatt in one of my Google+ circles. Oh, and it turns out he just made a public post on his Google+ account about Uncle Zhou in Queens:







So here’s how that will show up on my results page for the query [uncle zhou queens]:







Cool! Now not only do I get some great reviews on the web, I get a review from a friend about a restaurant with recommendations about what dishes to order. My mouth is already watering...



Remember, to experience this updated feature, you’ll need to be on Google+ and also make sure that you’re logged into your Google Account when you search. In addition, only public posts on Google+ are visible in search results. Private posts on Google+ aren’t.



We’re rolling out this update over the coming days. This is just the latest step in helping you find the most relevant information possible, personalized to your interests and the people you care about. To learn more, check out our help center. May your searching be tasty!



Posted by Sagar Kamdar, Product Manager

High-quality sites algorithm launched in additional languages

(Cross-posted from the Webmaster Central blog)

For many months, we’ve been focused on trying to return high-quality sites to users. Earlier this year, we rolled out our “Panda” change for searches in English around the world. Today we’re continuing that effort by rolling out our algorithmic search improvements in different languages. Our scientific evaluation data show that this change improves our search quality across the board and the response to Panda from users has been very positive.

For most languages, this change impacts typically 6-9% of queries to a degree that a user might notice. This is distinctly lower than the initial launch of Panda, which affected almost 12% of English queries to a noticeable amount. We are launching this change for all languages except Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, where we continue to test improvements.

For sites that are affected by this algorithmic change, we have a post providing guidance on how Google searches for high-quality sites. We also have webmaster forums in many languages for publishers who wish to give additional feedback and get advice. We’ll continue working to do the right thing for our users and serve them the best results we can.

Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

Inside Google’s Search Office

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

I’ve been working with Matt Cutts and Ben Gomes in the same office for over 10 years. We work on search every day, and earlier this week, we took our office talk to the stage at an event hosted by the Churchill Club. Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan moderated our in-depth discussion on search, how it works, and what’s ahead for us in the future. We also reminisced about first joining Google, the time my car ran out of gas as Ben and I discussed a change to the algorithm, and other great memories over the years.

Come sit inside our office for a chat about Google Search:

• To hear more about the principles that drive changes to the algorithm and how these changes are tested and implemented, go to 15:40
• To hear the discussion on why we don’t hand-pick results, start watching at 41:04
• For more on my vision for the future of search, jump to 1:12:28
• Guess who Danny thinks is the brains, looks, and brawn of this operation, and check it out 1:08 (hint: I’m the brains).

Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

Get to your answer quicker with Instant Pages

During our Inside Search event in June, we announced Instant Pages, which helps you skip the extra seconds spent waiting for a page to load and get to the answers you’re looking for faster with webpages that load instantly.

Instant Pages uses new prerendering technology that’s available in Chrome, and will be enabled by default in the newest version of Chrome, released today.

When we can predict with reasonable confidence that you'll click the first result, Instant Pages will begin loading the webpage early. By the time you click on the result, the entire webpage will often appear to have loaded instantly. Take a look at this side-by-side comparison:

Try Instant Pages today by downloading the latest version of Chrome.

Posted by Ziga Mahkovec, Software Engineer

Tips from Google’s User Happiness Researcher

I'm Daniel Russell, and I'm responsible for “user happiness” on Google's Search Quality team. My team conducts user experience research to try and get the inside story on what people do when they search. We're constantly asking: What works and doesn't work for them? What are they looking for? What DO they want?

To understand the full richness and variety of what people do when searching on Google, we spend many hours in the field, observing as people search. We hear it when they're happy, and when they're terribly frustrated. And perhaps most importantly, we also pay attention to the things they don't say -- the inexpressible "gotchas" that get in the way of their search.

One of the ways I do this kind of work is to teach classes on Internet search skills. I’ve found that while everyone can use Google, some seem to be better at it than others. I try to capture those skills and pass them along to classrooms of students, teachers and librarians. I throughly enjoy showing folks how to search more effectively, and learning new tricks and ideas along the way from them!

I’ll be posting here over the next several weeks with tips and techniques that will let you use Google more efficiently and reflect a bit on the way search changes the way we research, study, write and think.

To start, it’s worth knowing that we’ve made a bunch of recent changes in the way you can search images, and I’d like to show you a couple examples.

Understanding a name: In today’s world, you sometimes only “meet” people virtually. If someone has a name that’s not common in your culture, you may not know if they’re male or female. Here’s a trick: just look for the name in Google Images, like [Nikhil], and you should get a pretty good idea. Here are a few other name queries you might try: [Xiaomei], [Aislan], or one that I had to look up, [Pelin].

It's simple enough, but if you haven't seen this kind of trick before, it's well worth knowing. And as these examples point out, what the image search results show you is a sampling of the possibilities, not a definitive answer.

Finding a book by its cover color: If you’re a visual type, you may find it easier to find a book by its color rather than its exact title. Suppose you want to find a book about Rosa Parks. You don't remember the title, just that it had a green cover. Try searching for [Rosa Parks book] in Google Images - adding the word "book" to the query will limit the searches to images related just to books.

Then, using the color filter tool in the left-hand panel, you can select the green filter and find only books about Rosa Parks that have a green color. Voila! You've found your green-covered book about Rosa Parks.

You can experiment with any query, even those that don’t obviously seem to have a visual component. Give it a try, and check back later for other tips!

Posted by Dan Russell, Über Tech Lead, Search Quality & User Happiness