Google improves web site links returns

INTERNET SEARCH INNOVATOR Google has applied the tweak brush to its search results and improved the way that web site links are returned.

The changes were introduced with a blog post that explained that by making web site links clearer on its returns page Google hoped to save searchers time and deliver them straight to the part of a web site that they were actually looking for.

"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," wrote Daniel Rocha, software engineer on the Sitelinks team in the Google blog.

"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 links delivered depends on the query so some returns will have more sitelinks than others, this will depend on the nature of the search and the site that needs searching.

The changes will appear in user searches over the next few days, according to Rocha, and will work with more advanced web browsers including Chrome, Firefox and IE 7 and above. µ