Google shows what it calls sitelinks for certain queries, and then only for some sites or domains. They appear below the first result on the results page (usually a domain name that contains most or all the keywords from the query), and represent shortcuts to specific content on that site that Google thinks may help you get to the information you need quicker than by manually navigating the site.

Where is the added value? Well, if you own a nice generic domain name that may collect a fare amount of type in traffic, having additional sitelinks show up on a Google search page can only increase the possibility that a visitor will actually end up on your site. Sitelinks, even though claimed by Google as automatically generated by the search algorithm (or see below), give an image of authority for a domain name. So the value of a generic domain name, with the appropriate content on the site and a nice amount of traffic, is increased even further for having additional exposure on Google, which most probably means more traffic. If you were to sell your domain name (and website), which incidentally has sitelinks showing up in Google, you’d probably get a little extra cash for the added value. Ok, that’s great, but what if sitelinks don’t appear for your site?

Bookworm SEO posted an interesting post about his attempt to do research on Google sitelinks on his blog. In this Part 1 of his research post series, he gives a list of 100 sites that Google sitelinks show up for. Sounds interesting, and I’m looking forward to see if he actually comes up with definitive results. I suppose Google will also be interested in seeing this, although I doubt they’ll acknowledge his results should they prove to be valid.

In the meantime, this is what Google says about sitelinks in Webmaster Guidelines:

The links shown below some sites in our search results, called sitelinks, are meant to help users navigate your site. Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they’re looking for.

We only show sitelinks for results when we think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn’t allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don’t think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user’s query, we won’t show them.

At the moment, sitelinks are completely automated. We’re always working to improve our sitelinks algorithms, and we may incorporate webmaster input in the future.

You can aslo see this on Google Webmaster Guidelines.

For now, webmasters can tell Google not to show sitelinks for their site through the Webmaster Tools dashboard, and that sums up all the control webmasters have over sitelinks.

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Google decided to intriduce Google Shared Stuff profiles into Google Maps. User who decide to share a map they have created (viewed), can now have information from their Google Shared Stuff profile shown together with the map (for example, the user’s picture appears with the map). This adds the personal touch to Google Map sharing, and since it’s integrated with a whole lot more through the Shared Stuff profile, we could say Google Maps are now Social Google Maps.

Here is a video explaining the new addition to Google Maps:

Google has already entered the social networking playground with opening in a big way in early November 2007. This is another move that clearly reveals the path towards a new social Google dimension. Is Google Search somewhere at the end of the social network evolution for Google? I wonder what Google search results would look like then.

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Following Live Search updates a few weeks ago, Microsoft has rolled out additional changes that are the end of Live Search service updates for this fall. Updates consist of the following:

Maps and Directions

• Innovative driving directions
• Innovative visualization and 3-D
• Innovative local content index including user-generated content
• Virtual Earth platform updates

Mobile Enhancements

• Live Search for Windows Mobile with voice input
• Live Search 411
• Live Search for use with BlackBerry® Devices

Read in more detail in their official press release.

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I guess this was only a matter of time, but AdSense is finding its way onto Facebook through targeted publishers. Although AdSense has been around on Facebook ever since launch through personal pages, Google is now taking a more direct approach by creating a network targeted specifically at Facebook publishers. According to this post on VentureBeat (there is also an illustration of what this looks like), Google is making efforts in getting third-party Facebook app developers to show AdSense on their application pages. But these AdSense are not just plain old ads; they are targeted specifically for advertisers who want their ads to appear on Facebook. Google was only to quick to exploit this opportunity, especially since the other two main competitors, Microsoft and Yahoo, both have Facebook in their sites, with Microsoft already having signed a deal with Facebook to show its ads across the site.

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This is not so new in concept, but what’s new is that now you can show YouTube videos on your site accompanied by relevant ads while playing in a customized embeddable video player. There are a couple of videos explaining this, but I chose this one:

It’s easy enough to get started by following instructions here (you have to link your AdSense account with your YouTube account). The same page also shows other video explaining AdSense video units.

UPDATE: Video units are only available for those based in the United States with English language websites. I only just realized I missed this small but important bit of information.

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Webmaster Tools will from now on feature more frequent data updates to ensure data freshness. This is something that has been sought by webmasters for a while. The new update frequency is for verified sites and has to do with crawling, indexing and search query stats.

According to this post on the Webmaster Central Blog, you will only see more frequent updates if your site actually gets new links over time. They are calling for comments and further suggestions, so head on over to the blog and drop them a note.

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Yahoo has rolled out great search enhancements recently. I especially like the Search Assist, or rather the way it was implemented. Search assist is nothing new, but Yahoo! has gone further with making it as unobtrusive as possible. It’s great for more general queries where the searcher wants information but is not exactly sure how to formulate the query. For example, if you are looking for information on programming, the search assist neatly breaks this general query down into more specific like java programming, c programming, linear programming, programming languages (which looks like it’s going to give an overview of programming, thus qualifies as best choice probably), tutorials (also a good tangent), and so on.

If your query is related to image content, then results are populated with thumbnail links towards actual images from image search and Flickr (although these are given pretty much only if you actually search for “photo(s)” through your search query).

These changes will improve Yahoo!’s position in the minds of people searching for information in various formats.

Update: Just found this photo on Flickr, from the internal Yahoo! Search launch party.

I love the Search Assist results for “martini”

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Google AdSense announced the launch of AdSense for Mobile.

This service is intended for webmasters who have created sites especially for viewing on mobile devices. Ads run on an auction model, and are contextually targeted to the content being viewed on the page. It’s now available to webmasters from 13 countries worldwide: US, England, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Russia, Netherlands, Australia, India, China, and Japan (in the coming weeks).

Here is a short introduction to the AdSense for Mobile platform.

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Operating a dynamic website? This might be interesting. The duplicate content issue is a well known problem when it comes to getting your pages indexed and ranked in the search engines. There are many solutions such as URL rewriting (mostly on Unix/Linux, alhtough there are ways to make it work on Windows), sessions and cookies, URL parsing which is pretty much a variation of URL rewriting…

There is a post about this on Google Webmaster Central. The thing that caught my eye in the post is the following:

1. When we detect duplicate content, such as through variations caused by URL parameters, we group the duplicate URLs into one cluster.
2. We select what we think is the “best” URL to represent the cluster in search results.
3. We then consolidate properties of the URLs in the cluster, such as link popularity, to the representative URL.

Item (2) is interesting. Unless you actually show different content when your page receives a different value for a parameter, which pretty much means there is no duplicate content, why would Google need to select what it thinks is the “best” representative page for a particular URL cluster. Yahoo allows webmasters to tell it what their choice for the representational URL is. By relying on Google to choose the “best” URL you actually give up any control that Google just gave you:

1. Removing unnecessary URL parameters — keep the URL as clean as possible.
2. Submitting a Sitemap with the canonical (i.e. representative) version of each URL. While we can’t guarantee that our algorithms will display the Sitemap’s URL in search results, it’s helpful to indicate the canonical preference.

So if I am not guaranteed to have my URL choice shown in search results, what’s the point of having the option to explicitly state that URL in the submitted site map? Kinda reminds me of the door dilemma - “damned if you enter, damned if you don’t enter”.

The whole story revolves around having your incoming link juice distributed over multiple variations of what’s essentially the same URL. So 100 links towards a “clean” URL will be distributed to all the URL parameter variations, and decrease incoming link value, which is not what you want, especially after all the hard work associated with link building.

In the end, it all comes down to is to try to use URL rewriting even if it takes a hosting solution change. Everything else is an unsure fix, complicates any site development, and will produce unwanted results later.

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Yahoo! Small Business rolled out a new feature that will make it easier for customers to submit and authenticate their web sites to Yahoo! Site Explorer. Pretty much all you have to do is enable “sitemap.xml” and your site gets submitted to Y!SE automatically.

All new stores and existing stores that have “sitemap.xml” enabled will also have access to a toolkit within Site Explorer. After a few hours from enabling stores will have the ability to locate indexed pages and the links that point to them, and also to delete pages in the index or rewrite dynamic URLs.

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