This format takes up about 8 times as much pixel space, pushing non-sitelink results further down the page. The additional space is taken up by expanded versions of the meta title for pages, the destination URL for each page, and a snippet of the page’s text or meta description. Additionally, on some pages, Google is experimenting with a search widget that lets people quickly search within the site.

Google will only display the expanded sitelinks if you enter a query that very specifically targets a single website; for example, you can see SEJ’s sitelinks with the query “SEJ” or “Search Engine Journal,” but a hunt for “search engine news” doesn’t give any one outlet a larger chunk of real estate. Google will also sometimes provide a smaller selection of sitelinks, providing only 4 to 10 instead of the default 12 if they are “less certain” you want a specific site.

What You Need to Change

The expanded sitelink means that users who are heading to your site through Google will have easy access to a variety of target pages. To ensure that you make the most of this, you need to:

• Take a look at your current sitelinks for major issues.
• Improve the meta title and description to give an enticing pitch as quickly as possible.
• Refine and re-optimize the pages that are sitelinked for user experience.