Indented Sectioned / Categorised Search Results in Google

[josef]

Hi Everyone,

I am currently trying to work out how Google indents the first result of some websites and put categories in, I have viewed the source code of a number of the websites, but nothing has explained how Google sections a site and then lists those sections as sub links below the first result. The only thing I have come across is a META tag in one of the websites I looked at with a META tag called "section":

<meta name="section" content="A-Z OF DRUGS" />Taken from this page (http://www.talktofrank.com/home_html.aspx)

I then did some research on this attribute for the META tag but no success, it seems that this attribute is actually invalid or doesn't exist, leading me to believe that it would have no effect on how Google does section the first result.

Examples of what I mean.

Search for "Talk to Frank" with 1st result indented with categories (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=talk+to+frank&btnG=Google+Search)
Search for "BBC" with 1st result indented with categories (http://www.google.com/search?q=bbc&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a)

So my question is this, has anyone worked this out or do they have any suggestions on how this is achieved, the technical aspect to it I have even attended a few meet ups about SEO and put this same question forward with print-outs and nobody has had an answer. If everything that is listed in Google is organic (supposedly) then this must be an organic thing that Google has somehow worked out using an algorithm, but how would Google know how to section your site?

Many thanks, I hope somebody can answer this question for me.

[payasl]

Google calls those Sitelinks. There isn't much you can do to affect it except to have solid navigation in place.

[Chris Boggs]

Good answer by Payasl. These are Sitelinks, as defined/introduced by Google here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/09/information-about-sitelinks.html

Our SEO engineers have seen an early correlation showing that the links are also affected by the numbers of links to the extra-referenced pages. Has anyone else noticed/studied this?

[themicroisver]

Hi,

I've tried to search for 'phpbb' using Google:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=phpbb&btnG=Google+Search

I got the following result in the first place:

PHPBB <PAGE-TITLE>
phpBB is a high powered ... <PAGE-DESCRIPTION>
www.phpbb.com/ - 21k - Cached - Similar pages
---- Downloads - www.phpbb.com/downloads.php
---- Demo - www.phpbb.com/demo.php
---- Support - www.phpbb.com/support/
---- Community - www.phpbb.com/phpBB/
---- More results from www.phpbb.com »

How to make Google groups our pages like the one above? e.g. Downloads, Demo, Support, Community, etc. Do we have to provide additional information into Google Sitemap?

Thanks

[rainborick]

The additional links are called Site Links. They're generated automatically by Google for the top result. There's really nothing you can do except build an exceptionally strong, well-structured site in order to qualify.

[Chris Boggs]

note I merged these two threads since they discussed the same subject.