I agree I do a lot of egosurfing and its not just today that I have confessed to it. I have done so in the past.
Today, was just another day and I did what I love to do most on Google. Searched for "Akshay Surve" on Google and see for yourself.
Take a look at the screenshot attached below:
Those links below the first search result are called sitelinks. Here is what Google has to say about them:
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.
The surprising bit here is that Google itself doesn't have sitelinks under its search result (when I made this post). Google after all is the least SEO'd website 😉
"Seo By the Sea" has a very interesting article related to sitelinks and the patent related to Google's listing of Internal Site Links.
I always thought that I was sound at White Hat SEO and understood it well. Looks like this would be a good addition to any SEO expert's resume.
Now let me quickly share the reason I was pleasantly surprised. I was working on a master plan from the start of this year.
- Get to the top of search results for the query 'akshay'.
- Get my pics on Google when you search for 'akshay'.
The current one at the top is the Wikipedia page of Akshay Kumar. Defeating it would call for a celebration. Getting my pictures in search results at the top is going to be very difficult. Till then you could treat your eyes to Akshay Kumar's pictures when you search for 'akshay' on Google.
I started at number #10/11 around December/January. Now I am at #5 (here when I search for 'akshay', it may vary at your end depending on geographical location). Now I have got the sitelinks featured for akshaysurve.com which surely means Google is taking notice.