Google is deprecating the Sitelinks Search Box, the search box you see under some search result snippets for some categories of queries. This feature launched ten years ago and is now being dropped from Google globally, in all languages and regions in starting on November 21, 2024.
What are Sitelinks Search box. A sitelinks search box is a quick way for people to search your site or app immediately on the search results page. The search box implements real-time suggestions and other features, Google said.
What Google said. Google posted on the Search Central blog that the reason is it being removed is due to lack of use. Google said “over time, we’ve noticed that usage has dropped.”
To “help simplify the search results, we’ll be removing this visual element starting on November 21, 2024,” Google added. Google said it will roll out globally across all search results, in all languages and countries.
What they look like. Here is a screenshot of what these Sitelinks Search Boxes look:
Does not impact Sitelinks or Search. Google said this does not impact your search rankings or the other sitelinks in the search results. “This doesn’t affect rankings or sitelinks otherwise, and won’t be listed in the Search status dashboard,” Google wrote.
More details. Google will remove the Search Console rich results report for Sitelinks Search box and Google will also stop highlighting the markup in the Google Rich Results Test.
Google said you can remove sitelinks search box structured data from your site but added “:there’s no need to do so.” “Unsupported structured data like this won’t cause issues in Search, and won’t trigger errors in Search Console reports. If you decide to remove sitelinks search box structured data, note that site names also uses a variation of WebSite structured data, which continues to be supported,” Google added.
Why we care. The Sitelinks Search Box can be a quick way for searchers to do quick internal search searches for your website directly from the Google search results page. Google said it was not used as much as it used to, but if you did get a lot of usage out of this feature, then you may be impacted in some way.
Maybe consider making your internal search box more prominent if you are concerned that Google won’t provide this for your users directly in Google Search.
