Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing Consultant

You may have noticed in recent months that Google has added some “Additional Links” below some search criteria (try this one or this one). From everything I can find online, this is automatic and only occurs if the following conditions are met:

1. You are a high ranking site, specifically #1 for that search term.
2. You have an identifiable architecture as defined by Google.
3. You have at least 4 sections that rank well (PR5 or higher) within your site for that search term as well.

I think this is both good and bad. Good because it provides instant navigation within the site so the user only has to search for the highest level of term “Adidas” instead of “Adidas Performance”, which cuts down on time for the user, but also processing on Google’s side. Bad because Google is dumb. Take the illustration below for example:

Google has obviously indexed the right site and knows categories within it, but take a look the first additional result. Somehow I think that’s wrong, based on the url alone. That is most likely a problem with the way Google indexes Flash, but needs to be remedied somehow. So far, I have not found any online utility to protest the additional results or petition Google to update them. I assume you could go through the regular channels, but those are not always the fastest.

Also, where is the EXPRESSFASHION.com webmaster during all of this? Certainly you can go on brand alone, but don’t you want your users to be presented with the best experience possible, everywhere?

Let me know what you think in the comments.