Friday 11 May 2012

Google Launches Several Improvements To Sitelinks 4 adjustments to sitelinks appear on Google's April algo change list


We’re still digging into Google’s big list of algorithm changes released on Friday.
You can read about some of the noteworthy changes in the following articles:
Google Algorithm Changes For April: Big List Released
Google Increases Base Index Size By 15 Percent
Google Makes More Freshness Tweaks To Algorithm
Bi02sw41: Did Google Just Make Keywords Matter Less?
Google Should Now Be Much Better At Handling Misspellings
Google Tweaks Algorithm To Surface More Authoritative Results
There were over 50 changes announced for April, and 4 of them had to do
 specifically with sitelinks:
  • “Sub-sitelinks” in expanded sitelinks. [launch codename "thanksgiving"]
  •  This improvement digs deeper into megasitelinks by showing sub-sitelinks 
  • instead of the normal snippet.
  • Better ranking of expanded sitelinks. [project codename "Megasitelinks"] 
  • This change improves the ranking of megasitelinks by providing a minimum
  •  score for the sitelink based on a score for the same URL used in general ranking.
  • Sitelinks data refresh. [launch codename "Saralee-76"] Sitelinks (the links that
  •  appear beneath some search results and link deeper into the site) are generated
  •  in part by an offline process that analyzes site structure and other data to 
  • determine the most relevant links to show users. We’ve recently updated the 
  • data through our offline process. These updates happen frequently (on the order
  •  of weeks).
  • Less snippet duplication in expanded sitelinks. [project codename "Megasitelinks"] We’ve adopted a new technique to reduce duplication in the snippets of expanded sitelinks.
That “dig deeper” link, by the way, links to Inception on Know Your Meme. You might find
the other link from the list a bit more useful though. It goes to a blog post from Google’s
Inside Search blog from last summer, talking about the evolution of sitelinks, when they
 launched full-size links (with a URLs and one line of snippet text) and an increase to the
maximum number of sitelinks per query (from 8 to 12).
Mega Sitelinks 

At that time, they also combined sitelink ranking with regular result ranking to “
yield a higher-quality list of links” for sitelinks. Preusmably, it is that aspect, which
Google considers to be “megasitelinks” as that is the code name of the change listed
 in the new list, which talks about better ranking of expanded sitelinks. The change,
as noted, provides a minimum score for the sitelink based on a score for the same
 URL used in general ranking.
One of the changes was a data refresh, so the sitelinks gathered should be based
on fresher information.


About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network
of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow Chris on Twitter, on StumbleUpon, on Pinterest
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Twitter Updates Its Mobile Website The site will now be compatible with more feature phones and older web browsers


Twitter announced today that it is updating its mobile website. The updates are to make the
 website more consistent across various mobile phones and browsers. The changes to 
Twitter brought about last December will now be available to those using feature phones, low-bandwidth networks, and older browsers.
The announcement was made by Satya Patel, Twitter vice president of product, 
over on the Twitter blog. Patel detailed some of the changes coming to feature phone tweeters:
In this updated version of mobile.Twitter.com, you can see all the Tweets from the accounts you follow in the Home tab and check your @mentions in the Connect tab. You can see what’s trending in the Discover tab, and access your direct messages and Tweets in the Me tab.
Patel also stated that, similar to the iPhone and Android Twitter websites, the new mobile 
Twitter will be faster than its previous iteration. Also, the site will use one-third less bandwidth than before. All of these changes to Twitter’s mobile web site will begin rolling out today.
It makes sense that Twitter is actively supporting feature phones and simple, low-signal devices. Smartphones have not yet dominated the industry completely: feature phones are still a large portion 
of the cell phone market. Of course, the parts of the world where Twitter can most be an effective communication tool are the same parts where feature phone use is most widespread.
Do you access Twitter from a feature phone? If so, how well does it work? Leave a comment 
below and let us know.