Sitelink

What are Sitelinks?

Sitelinks double or triple the space your search result occupies — this visually crowds out competitors and significantly increases your click-through rate. You can’t directly request sitelinks, but you can influence them deliberately through clear site structure and strong internal linking. If Google doesn’t display sitelinks for your brand search, that’s a signal that your site architecture and navigation need improvement.

Sitelinks are additional links to subpages of a website that Google automatically displays below the main result in search results. When you search for a major brand like “Amazon” or “Wikipedia,” you often see 4–8 sitelinks to categories or popular pages — these are sitelinks. Sitelinks significantly improve a website’s visibility in the SERPs: they take up more space, appear trustworthy, and allow users to navigate directly to relevant subpages without visiting the homepage first.

Technically, Google automatically determines which subpages are worthy of sitelinks: they must be relevant internal links that users often click, and Google must rate them as valuable for the search query. SEOs can suggest preferred sitelinks in Search Console (as a suggestion), but Google ultimately decides on its own. Sitelinks often appear for brand name searches or very strong, established websites with good internal linking. The number of sitelinks displayed depends on the search query and the importance of the links.

For practice: you can’t force sitelinks, but you can influence them. Good internal linking is important — the most popular categories should be linked from the homepage. Use meaningful anchor texts for internal links so Google understands where they lead. A clear navigation structure also helps. In Search Console under “Settings” you can suggest preferred sitelinks to display instead of automatic ones. Sitelinks are especially important for national/international brands — they significantly increase brand click-through rates. Monitor whether sitelinks are displayed and which ones — this data shows Google’s perception of your website.