What are quick links to a website? How to influence them

Quick links to a website are links to other pages (or sections of a page) that appear under some search results on Google. They help users quickly navigate to relevant information on a website. Quick links first appeared in 2005 and were officially announced in 2006.

Quick links to a website are the most common search feature. They appear in 1.8 per cent of searches, according to the US database. Quick links accompany almost every branded query, and they also appear for many other queries, including informational ones. Overall, about 67% of all organic queries for Wikipedia.org contain quick links to the site.

Different types of quick links to a site

Quick links to a site have changed over time and they can appear in many different forms. Google often changes everything, including the number of quick links shown and how they appear in search results. Some quick links are accompanied by an outline or images, while others are presented as a carousel or dropdown boxes. There are currently different types of quick links to a website on Google.

Paid additional links

In this article we talk about organic quick links, but we want to separately mention that additional links can also appear in adverts. The biggest difference between paid additional links and other types of links is that you can easily control the text and URL that appear in your adverts. Other types of quick links are automatically generated and their content and text are determined by an algorithm.

Organic quick links to a website

These links appear mainly in branded queries and contain up to six links to other pages on your website. They only appear in the first search results.

Single-line organic quick links to a website

Single-line organic quick links can appear for many different types of queries. They usually include up to four links, but there is a carousel-style presentation option in which there may be more. These quick links can lead to other pages on the site or take you directly to content on pages with a snippet link.

A quick link in the form of a site search box in organic search results

A site search box allows users to search a site or app and go directly to search results. It only appears for branded queries and is automatically added by Google. You can help them understand your site better by adding structured data for the site search box to your homepage, but this is not mandatory and does not increase the likelihood of the site search box appearing in search results.

Why you need quick links to your site

With quick links, you get more visibility in search results. Additional links take up more prominence and also make your site stand out in search results.

With quick links, you help users get the content they want faster. This applies to content on the same page as well as on different pages.

How to influence quick links to your site

You cannot edit quick links in organic search results. They are generated by an algorithm. You used to be able to downgrade them in Google Search Console, but unfortunately Google has removed this feature. Nevertheless, there are a few ways to influence them.

Website Structure. The architecture of your website plays a role in selecting quick links to display. If your site has a flat architecture, Google may need to rely on other signals to show quick links.

Internal linking. The way your pages are linked to other pages, as well as the anchor text used, will have an impact on quick links. The same goes for on-page link positioning and breadcrumbs.

Adding a noindex tag will make it impossible for the page to appear as a quick link. This is not the best method of control and I recommend using it only in exceptional cases.

Removing the site search box. If you don't want a search box to appear for your site, you can add the following tag to the home page: <meta name="google" content="nositelinkssearchbox" />

Usefulness and Relevance. Think of different things that are useful to users and provide relevant results.

The hreflang tags will help Google display relevant quick links based on language or country preference.

Headings and table of contents (possible). Many one-line quick links have the same content as the headings on the page.

What people are searching for (maybe). We don't think this has ever been confirmed, but in most cases the queries people are searching for are highly correlated with the displayed quick links. A lot of the most frequent queries match the displayed quick links.
Custom Signals (maybe). Bing's patent has shown that they can use clickstream data for their version of quick links called "direct links" (Deep Link). It is possible that Google could also use such data, but this is unconfirmed.