This is straying from what I usually cover on search insights but I found this so intriguing that I had to post it. Below is a screenshot of a Google results page that appears when you type ‘gmail’ into the search box. Look at the bottom left sitelink. Weird eh? No where on the Gmail homepage does it have a link saying ‘I believe god wants you to know’ which is where the sitelinks are normally generated so I’m completely stumped as to how this turned up here. A quick Google search didn’t reveal anyone else had spotted this either? Any suggestions welcomed.
Update… 07 Dec 2010
John Mueller from Google has recently contacted this blog to say the sitelink is now fixed (see comments below). I’m still confused as to why it would ever have appeared there (although I have a theory that Google was crawling certain gmail accounts inadvertently). Any suggestions welcomed in the comments below.
John Mueller
December 6, 2010
Hi Duncan, thanks for bringing this up. I’ll pass it on to the Sitelinks team to review. Cheers!
Duncan Bloor
December 6, 2010
Thanks john – would be interested to find out what’s behind it if you have time to report back? This blog post is being found by quite a few people searching for “I believe god wants you to know gmail” and other variations so there’s obviously quite a few people picking up on it.
Byrel Mitchell
December 6, 2010
Yup, I’m seeing it too. Odd.
hussein
December 6, 2010
I saw this yesterday when I searched for Gmail. Today I decided to search about this, and this turned up 2nd. First was something on google.com that has been removed.
John Mueller
December 7, 2010
It looks like this is resolved now
. The team here has looked into what caused this and are making some changes to prevent this from happening with other sites. Thanks again for posting about it.
Joyce
December 7, 2010
Nope, not fixed: it still appears.
What does “are making some changes to prevent this from happening with other sites” mean?
What is Google doing with our search after all?
Christopher Cocca
December 7, 2010
They’re more ambitious than we ever thought possible! I blogged about this yesterday, too.
Duncan Bloor
December 8, 2010
What’s the link Chris?
Christopher Cocca
December 8, 2010
Hi Duncan! just a short post here: http://chriscocca.com/2010/12/06/google-creates-the-most-advanced-search-algorithm-ever/
Duncan Bloor
December 8, 2010
Ha ha – I like your take on it
Christopher Cocca
December 21, 2010
Thanks, Duncan. Also just posted a reflection about it on the Huffington Post in the religion section.
best,
Chris
HowDareThey
February 3, 2011
and here i thought it was just an attempt to push gmail!
but seriously, i wondered about that as well.
HowDareThey
February 3, 2011
whoa, that strange icon that appears to the left of the names, it looks kind of pretty, but it also looks slightly swastika like! might need slight revision