I know Google tests out a lot of UI features quietly on a small percentage of their servers, but this is the first time I’ve seen it on my own machine. Check out this search for ‘REO Speedwagon’ (sigh – don’t ask) which, in addition to the main www.speedwagon.com site shows links for ‘music’, ‘appearances’, ‘backstage’, and ‘kc newsletter 5 25′ (click through for a larger image):
The source code for the listing suggests this has something to do with ‘smap’ – a ‘sitemap’, perhaps? Are these additional listings available only for sites that are participating in the Google Sitemap beta program? Source code snippet:
<blockquote class=sm>
<a href=/url?sa=U&start=1&si=0&oi=smap
&q=http://discography.speedwagon.com/database/showalbums_new.pl&e=10342>
music</a><br>
<a href=/url?sa=U&start=1&si=1&oi=smap
&q=http://www.speedwagon.com/concerts/&e=10342 >
appearances</a><br>
<a href=/url?sa=U&start=1&si=2&oi=smap
&q=http://www.speedwagon.com/members.php&e=10342 >
backstage</a><br>
<a href=/url?sa=U&start=1&si=3&oi=smap
&q=http://www.speedwagon.com/kevin/shownews.pl&e=10342 >
kc newsletter 5 25</a><br>
<a class=fl href=”/search?hl=en&lr=&q=+site:www.speedwagon.com+reo+speedwagon”>
More results from www.speedwagon.com »</a>
</blockquote>
Disclaimer: Not at all sure if this is news or not – for all I know, Google’s been testing this for months and eighty people have spotted it before me.
Update: Seeing the same type of result for searches for ‘Blogger’ and ‘Picasa’. Makes sense, should this be sitemap related – after all, what sites are more likely to have sitemaps?
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Greg:
If you’re interested GoogleGuy confirmed the “additional results” experiment for me about two weeks ago on July 11th.
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050711-193225
cheers,
gary
Greg have you been able to confirm that the additional links are due to the Sitemap?
I’m seeing these links appearing on more and more results, but have yet to find confirmation of the cause.
Cheers,
Zak
Zak – no confirmation. Starting to see them often enought that I suspect my theory’s wrong.
I can confirm that it doesn’t have anything to do with Google sitemaps.
Searching for “translation” on Google returns those additional results for FreeTranslation.com, yet that site doesn’t have a Google Sitemap:
http://www.google.com/search?q=translation
And what`s this: http://www.freetranslation.com/sitemap.xml ?
Vukan, that file was added after these links appeared in Google’s search results. (I know this for a fact because I put it there…)
In fact, a few days after the “sitemap.xml” file was added, the additional links disappeared and then later changed to only display two links rather than four.