Search shows site links, but not hyperlinked?

[sknott]

2 of our competitors on Google have site links show in their results which brings you to that specific page. In our listing we show up with the same results a few spots behind them with our site links visible showing very similar content, but are not actually hyper linked.

Is there a way to fix the issue and let people actually be able to click on our site links instead of just reading them?

[sknott]

Forgot about this for a few days, thanks for the reply!

[Dr-Pete]

Sorry, either I read that wrong or was mixed up your source with a competitor while reviewing the question - I'm not seeing missing quotes now.

I'm wondering if the dual class designation for "url event_link" is causing a problem. It's something pretty finicky, I'm afraid, because sites with a very similar structure seem ok, even ones with two links to events.

For example, this site actually has a pretty weird linking structure (they link to the teams individually, but the team text still shows up linked in the snippet):

http://www.gotickets.com/sports/nfl/afc/new_england_patriots.php

Might be a good benchmark to use.

[sknott]

Peter,

So we have simplified the summary classes, however quoting looked okay so we were scratching our heads with that one. Would you be able to call out an example where we are not correctly quoting our attributes?

Thanks for all the help.

[sknott]

Thanks Peter,

I am new at ace so I will be sure to bring this to our back-end devs attention.  Excellent find and thank you very much. If it all works out I will let you all know the results.

[Dr-Pete]

These aren't regular site-links - you appear to be using the hCalendar microformat. I'm guessing there's just a validation problem. I notice you're not quoting ("") your attributes in the table. While the browser may read that ok, it's probably screwing up the microformat.

You've also got 2 "summary" classes for each event. It can get a bit tricky, and the specific code for any given site is a bit tough to tackle in a Q&A, but I'd see if you can add back the quotes and simplify the structure a bit. I strongly suspect your code isn't validating and the microformat is being parsed wrong.

[sknott]

Not sure if you saw the action on this, decided to reply directly:

Thanks for the replies, unfortunately these site links do not show in webmaster tools (sorry I did not mention that in the last post)

To see what I am referring to  you can check out:

http://www.google.com/search?q=patriots+tickets&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=UGB&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&noj=1&prmd=imvns&ei=i8x8Tu3YIef40gGD-7QR&start=10&sa=N&biw=1237&bih=712

Currently we are top of page 2 (aceticket) for the query "patriots tickets". Futher down the page you will see competitors with these links working and on Page 1 you will see 2 of the big guys (stubhub & ticketcity).

The only thing I have found that we do different from these guys is having our actual event pages use underscores instead of hyphens (top layer pages of ours use hyphens). That would lead me to believe that was the issue, but then I looked further down page 2 and saw a competitor using underscores and having these links be active.

I am new to Ace and I have not seen something like this happen for SEO results so I am not sure how to handle it.

Thanks for the help!

[sknott]

Thanks for the replies, unfortunately these site links do not show in webmaster tools (sorry I did not mention that in the last post)

To see what I am referring to  you can check out:

http://www.google.com/search?q=patriots+tickets&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=UGB&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&noj=1&prmd=imvns&ei=i8x8Tu3YIef40gGD-7QR&start=10&sa=N&biw=1237&bih=712

Currently we are top of page 2 (aceticket) for the query "patriots tickets". Futher down the page you will see competitors with these links working and on Page 1 you will see 2 of the big guys (stubhub & ticketcity).

The only thing I have found that we do different from these guys is having our actual event pages use underscores instead of hyphens (top layer pages of ours use hyphens). That would lead me to believe that was the issue, but then I looked further down page 2 and saw a competitor using underscores and having these links be active.

I am new to Ace and I have not seen something like this happen for SEO results so I am not sure how to handle it.

Thanks for the help!

[amitjain]

To demote a sitelink URL:

1. On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.
2. Under Site configuration, click Sitelinks.
3. In the For this search result box, complete the URL for which you don't want a specific sitelink URL to appear.
4. In the Demote this sitelink URL box, complete the URL of the sitelink you want to demote.

Once you've demoted or undemoted a sitelink, it can take some time for search results to reflect your changes.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=47334

[Wayne76]

Stephen, I think I'm following you, but I want to be sure... is there a way you can send a link to show an example of what you're referring to?

(If it's regarding the mega-links, there is way to exert some control of what site-links appear, or, rather, what you don't want to appear through Webmaster Tools.)

Thanks,

W