Sitelinks SEO: how Google picks the links under your result, and the site structure that earns them

Sitelinks are the extra links from your own domain that Google sometimes shows under your main result, such as "Pricing", "Contact" or "Dog supplies". You cannot switch them on or pick them yourself. Google's documentation says they are automated and built by analysing the link structure of your site, and they only appear when Google thinks they will help the searcher. Sitelink SEO is therefore site structure work: clear page titles and headings, a logical navigation, internal links to your important pages with short, accurate anchor text, and no near-duplicate pages competing for the same slot.

What sitelinks are, in Google's own words

Google's Search Central page on sitelinks describes them as "links from the same domain that are clustered together under a text result." Its systems "analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time." Two points in that page decide almost everything about how to work on them:

• They are automated. The page says plainly that "at the moment, sitelinks are automated." There is no form, setting or markup that requests them.
• They are conditional. Google says it shows sitelinks only "when we think they'll be useful to the user." If the site structure does not let its systems find good sitelinks, or the sitelinks are not relevant to the query, they are not shown.

That second point explains a pattern most site owners notice. Sitelinks appear most often on searches for your brand name, because a brand search is a navigational query and shortcuts into your site are genuinely useful for it. A generic query like "running shoes" is rarely navigational, so even a strong site will usually show a plain result there.

The four practices Google lists

The sitelinks documentation gives a short list of best practices. Each one is a concrete task.

Google's practice	What to do on your site
Titles and headings that are informative, relevant and compact	Give every key page a short, distinct title element and a matching main heading. "Pricing" beats "Home | Products | Our Great Pricing Plans 2026".
A logical site structure, with important pages linked from other relevant pages	Put your main sections in the top navigation and link to them from body copy where they belong, not only from the footer.
Concise, relevant internal anchor text	Link to the contact page with "Contact us", not "click here". The words in the link are a label Google can reuse.
Avoid repetitions in your content	Merge near-duplicate pages. Three pages called "Services" leave no clear candidate.

Make the links crawlable first

None of this works if Google cannot follow the links. Google's link best practices page says that, generally, it can only crawl a link that is an a element with an href attribute. Menus built from clickable span elements, or links that exist only as JavaScript click handlers, may not be parsed at all. Open your main navigation, view the page source or the rendered HTML, and check that every top level item is a real link with a real URL.

Titles carry more weight than people expect

Google's title link documentation asks for a title element on every page that is descriptive and concise, and it gives the home page as an example of what to avoid: a vague title like "Home". It also warns against boilerplate titles that differ by one word. A site where every page title starts with the same long brand slogan makes it harder to tell sections apart, both for people scanning results and for the systems choosing shortcuts.

How to remove or change a sitelink

Sometimes Google shows a sitelink you do not want, such as an old promotion, a login page or a careers page under a product search. The sitelinks page offers one route: "consider removing the page from your site or using noindex." In practice the choice looks like this:

• The page should not exist any more. Remove it, return a 404 or 410, or redirect it to its replacement.
• The page must stay for visitors but should not appear in Search. Add a noindex robots meta tag. That takes it out of Google's index entirely, not just out of the sitelinks, so only use it on pages that do not need to rank.
• The page is fine, but a better page should appear instead. Strengthen the better page: link to it from the navigation and from related pages with clear anchor text, and give it a sharper title.

Changes show up after Google recrawls the pages involved, so give it a few weeks before you judge the result.

The sitelinks search box is gone

Older guides tell you to add SearchAction markup to get a search box inside your sitelinks. That advice is out of date. Google's Search Central blog announced on 21 October 2024 that it would remove the sitelinks search box from results starting 21 November 2024, worldwide, because usage had dropped. The same post says the change does not affect rankings or the other sitelinks element, and that leftover markup "won't cause issues in Search". You can leave it or remove it.

One thing to keep: the post points out that site names use a variation of the same WebSite structured data, and that is still supported. If you strip the search box markup, keep the site name part on your home page:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "WebSite", "name": "Example Pet Supplies", "alternateName": "Example Pets", "url": "https://www.example.com/"
}
</script>

Google's site names documentation says this markup belongs on the home page of the domain or subdomain, and that it does not need to go on every page.

Organic sitelinks and Google Ads sitelinks are different products

The word "sitelink" means two things, and mixing them up wastes time.

	Organic sitelinks	Google Ads sitelink assets
Who chooses the links	Google's automated systems	You, plus dynamic sitelinks Google can add if they are enabled
Where they appear	Under an organic text result	Under a paid ad. The Google Ads help page lists Search, Video campaigns on YouTube, AdSense for Search, Performance Max and Demand Gen
Text limits	Taken from your pages	25 characters in most languages, 12 in double-width languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean
How to control them	Site structure, titles, internal links, noindex	Create, edit, schedule or remove them in the account at account, campaign, ad group or asset group level

A useful habit is to keep the two sets consistent. If your ads point to "Pricing", "Free trial" and "Contact", those pages should also be the clearest, best linked pages in your organic structure.

A short audit you can run this week

1. Search your brand name on Google and on a phone. Note which sitelinks appear and which ones you would rather see.
2. List the five to eight pages a returning customer looks for most. These are your intended sitelinks.
3. Check each one has a short, unique title and a matching main heading.
4. Check each one is linked from the main navigation with a real a href link and plain anchor text.
5. Look for duplicates: two "About" pages, an old and a new pricing page, test pages left live. Merge, redirect or noindex them.
6. Confirm your home page has a descriptive title (not "Home") and WebSite structured data with your site name.
7. Recheck the brand search a few weeks after the changes are crawled.

Questions about sitelinks and SEO

Can I tell Google which sitelinks to show?

Not directly. Google says sitelinks are automated and that it may take site owner input in the future. Today you influence them through site structure, titles, internal links and by removing or noindexing pages you do not want shown.

Why does my site have no sitelinks?

Usually because the query is not navigational, or because Google's systems could not find a clear set of useful shortcuts. A small site with few distinct sections, weak navigation or links that are not crawlable often shows no sitelinks, even for its own name.

Does structured data create sitelinks?

No markup creates organic sitelinks. WebSite structured data helps Google choose your site name, which is a separate part of the result.

Can I still demote a sitelink in Search Console?

The current sitelinks documentation does not list a demotion setting. The routes it gives are removing the page or using noindex, and a clearer structure that makes a better page the obvious choice.

Do sitelinks help rankings?

They are a display feature, not a ranking signal you can earn separately. They make a result you already have larger and more useful, which is why they matter most on brand searches.

The shortcut list has no equivalent in an AI answer

On Google, a brand search hands people a tidy set of shortcuts into your site. When the same person asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity about your company, there is no sitelink block. The assistant picks one or two pages to read, or none, and writes its own summary, which may send people to an old pricing page or a third party review instead of the page you would have chosen. The structure work above helps there too, because clear, well linked pages are easier for any system to find and quote. If you want to know which of your pages an assistant actually uses when it describes you, AI Knows Us asks the assistants those questions and records the sources behind each answer.