Can we "instruct" Google to display links in Google sitelinks

Whe开发者_如何学JAVAn you search for something on google, e.g. stackoverflow.com it shows you sitelinks on the search results page. Is there a way to manipulate this information. Or is there some way to suggest google that link x, link y and link z should be promoted on the search results page.

Short answer: not at present: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=47334

Quote:

At the moment, sitelinks are completely automated. We're always working to improve our sitelinks algorithms, and we may incorporate webmaster input in the future. There are best practices you can follow, however, to improve the quality of your sitelinks. For example, for your site's internal links, make sure you use anchor text and alt text that's informative, compact, and avoids repetition.

It seems you can remove pages you'd rather weren't in there, but you can't promote things you'd like (beyond normal good SEO) and you can't make Google display sitelinks if it isn't already.

As Andrew said, all you can really do regarding sitelinks is:

• Be considered an authority website by Google worthy of sitelinks in the first place, and
• Remove sitelinks that you don't want from your Google Webmaster control panel.

I have some high-ranking websites with sitelinks and it's clear that Google doesn't always have an easy time discerning what's worthwhile. Sometimes, my vBulletin forums even include sitelinks to random members from the first page of Google. The next day (or refresh), the sitelinks include non-prominent subforums. It truly feels random unless you have a more straightforward navigation system like a Wordpress blog.