Monday, October 21, 2024
It’s been over ten years since we initially announced the
sitelinks
search box in Google Search, and over time, we’ve noticed that usage has dropped.
With that, and to help simplify the search results, we’ll be removing this visual element starting on November 21, 2024.
(Search result showing a sitelinks search box)
This change will apply globally across all search results, in all languages and countries.
This doesn’t affect rankings or the other sitelinks
visual element, and won’t be listed in the Search status dashboard.
Once we stop showing sitelinks search box elements in Search, we’ll remove the
Search
Console rich results report for it and stop highlighting the markup in the
Rich Results Test.
While you can remove
sitelinks search box
structured data from your site, 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.
If you have any questions, feel free to drop by our
Search Central help community, or
ping us on social media.