Sitelink demotion
-
I have applied a sitelink demotion in webmaster tools, though this same sitelink is still appearing under my Google listing.
How long does it usually take to take effect? Or is there anything I can do about this?
Also, is there a way in which I can select or channel Google to show the sitelinks I want?
-
Legend. Thanks Purkey.
-
Without nuking the blog, the Google method is page by page, last caveat though is that they could reappear, "If you think that a sitelink URL is inappropriate or incorrect, you can demote it. Demoting a URL for a sitelink tells Google that you don't consider this URL a good sitelink candidate for a specific page on your site. Google doesn't guarantee that demoted URLs will never appear as a sitelink, but we do consider a demotion a strong hint that we'll try to honor when generating sitelinks."
Is the blog supposed to be behind a paywall or private to members? If it's not supposed to be publicly visible you should consider noindexing it in addition to securing it via login. Cheers!
-
Thanks Ryan! Appreciate your insights here.
Another quick question is that if I have a blog and don't want any blog posts to appear as sitelinks is there a way to demote an entire blog (and all posts within) instead of blog posts demoted separately?
-
Hi Gavo. Sitelinks are generally an amalgamation of your most visited pages, high search intent pages, and UX considerations. As such you can often control them by modifying your overall navigation and site structure. It might seem like a lot of work, but getting more people to visit the pages you want as sitelinks really doubles your efforts when those pages also become sitelinks.
As for the timeline, Google says, "Once you've demoted or undemoted a sitelink, it can take some time for search results to reflect your changes." Nice and precise! ;^) It will take eventually though, and not in months, but maybe days. Their resource is here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/47334 Cheers!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Despite proper hreflang and lang attribute implementation using xml sitemaps, I'm seeing sitelinks from different countries. Any help please?
When someone searches for our brand in US, instead of only US links, users are served with canadian or iranian sitelinks. Despite we have properly implemented xml sitemaps with hreflangs, even we have implemented lang attribute in the head section of source code for every country. I'd be thankful for any advice.
Technical SEO | | eset0 -
Unable to demote contact us & about us pages from sitelink?
Hey all, It's been 3 months now I demoted contact us & about us page via search console but it still appearing in my sitelink. Is there any other guidelines to be followed? Do anyone have the same experience? Susan.
Technical SEO | | promodirect0 -
Sitelinks Issue - Different Languages
Hey folks, We run different ccTLD's for revolveclothing.com (revolveclothing.es, revolveclothing.com.br, etc. etc.) and they all have their own WMT/Google Console with their own href lang tags etc. The problem is this. https://www.google.fr/#q=revolve+clothing When you look at the sitelinks, you'll see that one of them (sales page) happens to be in Portuguese on the French site. Can anyone investigate and see why?
Technical SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
Sitelink demotion not working after submitting in Google webmaster tool
Hello Friends, I have a question regarding demotion of sitelinks in Google webmaster tool. Scenario: I have demoted one of the sitelink for my website two months back; still the demoted sitelink has not been removed from the Google search results.May I know any reason, why this page is not getting removed even after demoting from GWT? If we resubmit the same link in demotion tool one more time, will it work? Can anybody help me out with this? Note: Since the validly of demotion exists only for 3 months (90 days), I am concerned about the same.
Technical SEO | | zco_seo0 -
Google Webmaster Tools Sitelinks Demotions
Does anyone know if the sitelinks demotions tool actually works. I went in and demoted a bunch of pages on my site but the pages are still showing up as sitelinks in search results. I did this like 2 months ago so I am assuming that is plenty of time for it to take. Any help with this would be great. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | ZiaTG0 -
Links below linking (not sitelinks)
Hi All, Please can you let me know the name and / or point me at an article / blog / directory on how best to achieve additional links under a search engine listing (I don't mean site links) e.g. I do a search for 'home insurance' on Google.co.uk and under the listing for Compare the Market it has - home insurance, building insurance and landlords insurance. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | Joseph-Vodafone0 -
Page Indexing increase when I request Google Site Link demote
Hi there, Has anyone seen a page crawling increase in Google Web Master Tools when they have requested a site link demotion? I did this around the 23rd of March, the next day I started to see page crawling rise and rise and report a very visible spike in activity and to this day is still relatively high. From memory I have asked about this in SEOMOZ Q&A a couple of years ago in and was told that page crawl activity is a good thing - ok fine, no argument. However at the nearly in the same period I have noticed that my primary keyword rank for my home page has dropped away to something in the region of 4th page on Google US and since March has stayed there. However the exact same query in Google UK (Using SEOMOZ Rank Checker for this) has remained the same position (around 11th) - it has barely moved. I decided to request an undemote on GWT for this page link and the page crawl started to drop but not to the level before March 23rd. However the rank situation for this keyword term has not changed, the content on our website has not changed but something has come adrift with our US ranks. Using Open Site Explorer not one competitor listed has a higher domain authority than our site, page authority, domain links you name it but they sit there in first page. Sorry the above is a little bit of frustration, this question is not impulsive I have sat for weeks analyzing causes and effects but cannot see why this disparity is happening between the 2 country ranks when it has never happened for this length of time before. Ironically we are still number one in the United States for a keyword phrase which I moved away from over a month ago and do not refer to this phrase at all on our index page!! Bizarre. Granted, site link demotion may have no correlation to the KW ranking impact but looking at activities carried out on the site and timing of the page crawling. This is the only sizable factor I can identify that could be the cause. Oh! and the SEOMOZ 'On-Page Optimization Tool' reports that the home page gets an 'A' for this KW term. I have however this week commented out the canonical tag for the moment in the index page header to see if this has any effect. Why? Because as this was another (if not minor) change I employed to get the site to an 'A' credit with the tool. Any ideas, help appreciated as to what could be causing the rank differences. One final note the North American ranks initially were high, circa 11-12th but then consequently dropped away to 4th page but not the UK rankings, they witnessed no impact. Sorry one final thing, the rank in the US is my statistical outlier, using Google Analytics I have an average rank position of about 3 across all countries where our company appears for this term. Include the US and it pushes the average to 8/9th. Thanks David
Technical SEO | | David-E-Carey0 -
Google Sitelinks
Is there anyway to control the sitelinks under a listing in Google? I have a group of lawyers where 1 of the them is showing up in the sitelinks. They want all of the lawyers to show up. Right now it is showing 1 lawyer, about page, contact us page, etc. Thanks!!!!
Technical SEO | | SixTwoInteractive0