Sitelink demotion

[Gavo]

I have applied a sitelink demotion in webmaster tools, though this same sitelink is still appearing under my Google listing.

How long does it usually take to take effect? Or is there anything I can do about this?

Also, is there a way in which I can select or channel Google to show the sitelinks I want?

[RyanPurkey]

Hi Gavo. Sitelinks are generally an amalgamation of your most visited pages, high search intent pages, and UX considerations. As such you can often control them by modifying your overall navigation and site structure. It might seem like a lot of work, but getting more people to visit the pages you want as sitelinks really doubles your efforts when those pages also become sitelinks.

As for the timeline, Google says, "Once you've demoted or undemoted a sitelink, it can take some time for search results to reflect your changes."  Nice and precise! ;^) It will take eventually though, and not in months, but maybe days. Their resource is here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/47334 Cheers!

[Gavo]

Thanks Ryan! Appreciate your insights here.

Another quick question is that if I have a blog and don't want any blog posts to appear as sitelinks is there a way to demote an entire blog (and all posts within) instead of blog posts demoted separately?

[RyanPurkey]

Without nuking the blog, the Google method is page by page, last caveat though is that they could reappear, "If you think that a sitelink URL is inappropriate or incorrect, you can demote it. Demoting a URL for a sitelink tells Google that you don't consider this URL a good sitelink candidate for a specific page on your site. Google doesn't guarantee that demoted URLs will never appear as a sitelink, but we do consider a demotion a strong hint that we'll try to honor when generating sitelinks."

Is the blog supposed to be behind a paywall or private to members? If it's not supposed to be publicly visible you should consider noindexing it in addition to securing it via login. Cheers!

[Gavo]

Legend. Thanks Purkey.