Is Google Testing Sitelinks Embedded in SERP Descriptions?

Anybody performing SEO is already aware of the power of sitelinks under the SERPs on Google. Although it’s supposedly an automated process and usually only appears on more authoritative websites for any given industry,  Google has recommended some best-practices for structuring your site navigation that may give your site a better chance at receiving them.

Well, if we know anything about the people at Google, it’s that they love to keep testing new features. Check out the screengrab below:

sitelinks now appearing within the content area.

Gosh, It hasn’t even been a week since they announced the ability to add embedded sitelinks within adwords ads, and now they’re throwing this into the mix!

This won’t be a long post because I’m anxious to start the weekend, but I will give you a quick gander at what might trigger these so you can have some fun experimenting.

It’s all in the Anchor Text.

I only looked at 2 examples so far, so please correct me if you find conflicting evidence, but both of these sitelink examples were for named anchor tags on the specified SERP url.  They were not links to interior pages, but they did contain very similar phrases (though it doesn’t have to be exact it seems) in both the linking anchor text and the named anchor text. Check out the example below:

you apparently don't need to be first result on the page to get the sitelinks either

and here’s the link to it on the actual site:

I should note that it doesn’t seem to matter what the actual href is, only the anchor text seems to matter. And it’s not appearing for all types of searches either; mostly information seeking searches from what I’ve seen so far.

At this stage, it’s hard to know whether it’s simply an experiment or a feature set to go live sometime in the near future, but better to be prepared!

Have you seen this during your searches? If so, let me know in the comments!