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I have a website up and running which is single-page. I do need site links to appear on google search. Currently, it is placed at top in google search but without site links. I have submitted sitemaps with https://example.com/services, https://example.com/projects etc which is then redirected at the application level to https://example.com/#services (status code 301) and so on. Google Search Console shows Page with redirection for some pages whereas Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical for others.

What can I do to get the site links shows in the google search?

Stephen Ostermiller
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Code With Me
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It is highly unlikely that Google will consider the within page links indicated with a # as unique pages. Sites like Github have heavy usage of hash links that help with navigation within the page but these links are not indexed by google.

The sitelinks guide by Google clearly says

We only show sitelinks for results when we think they'll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn't allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don't think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user's query, we won't show them. Read full article Sitelinks

It will be a good practice to make seperate pages of your # links with unique content in them

Shahzeb Qureshi
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  • Thank you for the info. Meantime, I removed the redirection(status 301), now it is status 200, and by using JavaScript, I scrolled to the corresponding section. But, that too doesn't do the trick. Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical is the response from google. Any other ideas? – Code With Me May 23 '19 at 06:03
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Google typically ignores the # in a URL. When it does consider them, they are used as "jump to" links. That is links that jump to a position on a page. They are not considered as indexed of their own, just positions on a page.

To get sitelinks you need to return your content via a unique URL of its own (ignoring the # value). e.g. those URLs you currently have redirecting. They need to directly return the content you want indexed for that URL.

Tony McCreath
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  • Google does pay attention to jump links. I often see Wikipedia pages in the search results where Google has put site links to the various sections of the page directly into the search results. – Stephen Ostermiller May 03 '19 at 10:44
  • Could you provide an example. Sometimes jump to links can look like a bit like site links. But it would be interesting to see if Google does mix pages and jump to links in a site link result. – Tony McCreath May 04 '19 at 11:35
  • If I search for "daisy bellis perennis" Google has four jump links in the search results to the various section of the Wikipedia article: ‎Description · ‎Cultivation · ‎Etymology · ‎Uses – Stephen Ostermiller May 04 '19 at 11:41
  • I guess it's semantics (or me being pedantic), they are "jump to" links, not "site links".They just look like small site links. To get jump to links related to a page, the page needs to contain anchor links (a tag) with an href to the # name. And a corresponding element that has the id set to the same name. Clicking on the link should move the page to the element. WikiPedia has the links in the content section, and the headings are given ids to match. To get Site Links you have to have a URL excluding the # value that directly returns the content requested. – Tony McCreath May 05 '19 at 12:37
  • Are you saying that Google wouldn't give small jumplinks for a single page home page? – Stephen Ostermiller May 05 '19 at 13:27
  • Google needs to see that they are used "jump to" links. In my experience the page itself needs to link to the locations on the page. Something else. You should not include URLs that redirect in a sitemap. Only URLs that can be directly indexed should be included. – Tony McCreath May 05 '19 at 16:08
  • Thank you guys for the info. Meantime, I removed the redirection(status 301), now it is status 200, and by using JavaScript, I scrolled to the corresponding section. But, that too doesn't do the trick. Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical is the response from google. Any other ideas guys? – Code With Me May 23 '19 at 06:03
  • Ah yes. That would be another issue. Your single page concept makes things complex. All pages now have the same content. The only difference is where people start. I think JavaScript sites typically only load the relevant part of the page first (so Google just sees that) then dynamically loads the rest of the page as user move around. They also use push state to dynamically change the URL they are on as they move. It sounds like you just want to avoid users having to change page? – Tony McCreath May 23 '19 at 14:00
  • @TonyMcCreath can you share any urls/docs on jumplinks? Learning about this myself and didn't realize that "jump links" were different than sitelinks. Read all the google docs on site links but can't find any google docs on jump links (just random posts from SEO companies). Thanks! – mattpr Sep 10 '19 at 12:01
  • This should help: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/jump-to-information-you-want-right-from.html – Tony McCreath Sep 12 '19 at 01:16