Sitelinks Search Box Gets an Upgrade

Google has added Autocomplete to their sitelinks search box that is tied directly to the site's content and onpage search engine. As you can imagine, this allows users to find the content they're looking for faster.

In order for your site to be eligible for the new sitelinks search box you need to have the following things in place.

• A functioning site-specific search engine.
• Proper Markup in place. You'll need to tell Google where your internal site search is located with the proper markup to your homepage. Google recommends using the schema.org/SearchAction with JSON-LD, microdata and RDF are also supported.

• An established preferred canonical URL homepage needs to be in place with all your page versions pointed to it. Google provided an example markup that you can see below.

  
  

As you know, implementing the recommended practices does not guarantee that a search for your company name will prompt the sitelinks box to appear. However, not doing so guarantees that Google will display their own results for your site. Read Google's full implementation details on their developer's site here and their formal announcement here.