Just very occasionally Google plays along and adjusts things while we’re actually looking at them which is always good for continuity, and straight after our last post about sitelinks, authority and the meaning of life in general they thoughtfully did just that, and updated them for us in WMT.

Whilst this is not unusual in itself, there appears to have been some more tweaking of the sitelinks algo as people have been reporting the appearance and /or removal of keywords in them.

Traditionally it has always looked like the algo removed any keywords that could possibly be thought of as “commercial” in intent as much as possible, so the “SEO” from “SEO Spain” would be removed, leaving just “Spain” kind of thing.. This is how it’s always been in the past on all sites observed.

So there definitely seems to have been a bit of a tweak, because as well as dropping the SEO Tools page completely, and swapping the “Malta” page for our “SEO Facts” page (sitelink anchor clearly taken from page URL i.e. “SEO & SEM ) they have added an “SEO” to both “Spain” & “Mallorca” which were both single word sitelinks previously.

Click image to see larger..

Our pal from Taree Internet was speculating on the possible workings of sitelink selection with some good thoughts a few days ago in our comments on the previous post, with some good thoughts, well worth a read..

Now all of our sitelink pages showing in WMT (they havent been updated in the SERP yet) are PR4 (as well as the one we blocked) and all but one of them ranks on the first page for it’s prime terms, the other one is second page.

The sitelink we blocked was also the only second level sitelink, a blog static page -  seoibiza.com/blog/ibiza blocked just because 2 Ibiza’s is unnecessary.

But overall, we have more “SEO’s” in our sitelinks if they stay like this.

…A sign of increasing trust (or authority) around that word?  ..not if rankings for the word (SEO) are anything to go by, as we’ve dropped from high #30′s to #60′s on .com global in the last few weeks for it.

update 25-02-09 now showing in SERP as below, click image to see details