Google has announced that search results on its search engine will now display up to eight sitelinks per site. Sitelinks are the second level navigation links shown below a site entry on a given page of search results. They help surfers connect with information more directly, but also circumvent the content that site owners display on their main page.

The direct access may help users shave off the few seconds of navigating that happens when they have to view a site’s main page first. But, it also presents a challenge for site owners who rely on advertising for income, or who want to communicate a promotion to their visitors.

Instead of showing one column of sitelinks, Google will now display two–they shared the example below.

Google also mentioned that they’re “tweaking things here and there so that Sitelinks will appear for many more websites, and with more descriptive names. These improvements should help get you to the specific page you’re looking for even more quickly.”

Adding more sitelinks creates a new twist on deep linking, one sanctioned by Google that enables users to control their browsing more. Usually that means viewing less promotional material. Many agree though, that deep linking is an unnecessary term created by commercial companies looking to leverage more revenue from incoming traffic.

However, inline linking or linking to images, videos and other media stored on another company’s server and embedding it in another site becomes more hazy. Google does that on some level with their image search page.

Somehow though, when Google does it, everyone thinks it’s a good thing.

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Entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 12:13 am under Google, Internet.

Read more entries by Matt Jansen.
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