Sitelinks Search Box: Definition and Status

The sitelinks search box was a search field that Google could show under the result for a brand’s homepage, letting people search within the site directly. Google retired the feature in November 2024.

What applies today?

Google announced the removal on October 21, 2024, in a post titled “Farewell, Sitelinks Search Box,” and stopped showing the box globally starting November 21, 2024. Google gave declining usage as the reason and stated that rankings and regular sitelinks are not affected. Some pages in the search results still describe the box as active. Those descriptions are outdated.

The box was controlled with WebSite markup and a SearchAction. Schema.org still defines SearchAction as an action of searching for an object, with target for the search URL.

To search within a site on Google, the site: operator works, for example site:example.com backpack.

Retired search features and rich results

September 5, 2014Google introduces the improved sitelinks search box. It sends queries straight to the site's own search pages.Source: developers.google.com
August 23, 2016Google announces it will remove the “mobile-friendly” label from mobile results, as 85% of pages already meet the criteria.Source: developers.google.com
January 21, 2020Google announces the end of data-vocabulary.org. Markup in this format is to lose rich result eligibility from April 6, 2020.Source: developers.google.com
October 30, 2020Google moves the end of data-vocabulary.org support to January 29, 2021.Source: developers.google.com
November 10, 2020Google announces that from May 2021, non-AMP pages will also be eligible for the mobile Top Stories feature.Source: developers.google.com
April 19, 2021New timing from mid-June 2021. AMP is then no longer required for Top Stories, and Google stops showing the AMP badge.Source: developers.google.com
July 18, 2023Google removes the related: search operator from its documentation, as it is no longer supported.Source: developers.google.com
August 8, 2023Google limits FAQ rich results to well-known government and health websites. How-to rich results are shown on desktop only.Source: developers.google.com
September 13, 2023How-to rich results are no longer shown on desktop either. Google calls the result type deprecated.Source: developers.google.com
October 13, 2023Google removes the host group element from its visual elements gallery, as it no longer appears in search results.Source: developers.google.com
April 17, 2024Google removes the guidance for the limited-access video carousel after the markup proved not useful at scale.Source: developers.google.com
August 9, 2024The Notes experiment, which let users add notes to search results, has ended. Google removes its documentation.Source: developers.google.com
September 24, 2024The cache: search operator no longer works. Google removes its documentation.Source: developers.google.com
October 2, 2024The cached link is no longer available in search results. Google keeps noarchive only as a historical rule.Source: developers.google.com
October 21, 2024Google announces that it will remove the sitelinks search box worldwide from November 21, 2024. Other sitelinks remain.Source: developers.google.com
November 29, 2024Google removes the sitelinks search box documentation and archives the nositelinkssearchbox rule.Source: developers.google.com
January 23, 2025Mobile search results no longer show breadcrumbs in the visible URL, only the domain. They remain on desktop.Source: developers.google.com
June 12, 2025Google announces it will phase out several structured data features, including Book Actions, Course Info, ClaimReview, Estimated Salary, Learning Video, Special Announcement and Vehicle Listing.Source: developers.google.com
September 9, 2025Google removes the documentation for course info, estimated salary, learning video, special announcement and vehicle listing. These types no longer appear in results.Source: developers.google.com
November 5, 2025Google phases out the practice problem and dataset types in Search. For Book Actions, Google withdraws the deprecation notice.Source: developers.google.com
May 7, 2026FAQ rich results no longer appear in Google Search. Google announced this in its changelog entry of May 8, 2026.Source: developers.google.com
June 15, 2026Google removes the documentation for the FAQ rich result.Source: developers.google.com
July 1, 2026Google now sends users directly to AMP pages on the publisher's own host. The AMP viewer, AMP Cache and signed exchanges are no longer involved.Source: developers.google.com

Only backed by press or social media, so not listed as events. Author photos (Authorship) disappeared in June 2014 according to Search Engine Land, and Authorship display in August 2014 according to Search Engine Watch. Google's Search Liaison confirmed the end of the cached link on X on February 1, 2024 (per 9to5Google). According to Search Engine Land, continuous scroll ended on desktop from June 25, 2024, with mobile following in later months. Last checked: October 8, 2026.

Example

HTML

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "WebSite",
  "url": "https://example.com/",
  "potentialAction": {
    "@type": "SearchAction",
    "target": "https://example.com/search?q={search_term_string}",
    "query-input": "required name=search_term_string"
  }
}
</script>

The markup remains valid schema.org vocabulary. It no longer triggers a display in Google Search. According to Google, you can remove it but do not need to, because unsupported structured data like this causes no issues in Search and no errors in Search Console.

Sources

Farewell, Sitelinks Search Box – Google Search Central Blogdevelopers.google.com
Google Deprecates Sitelinks Search Box – Schema App (secondary source)schemaapp.com
SearchAction – schema.orgschema.org

Last updated: October 8, 2026

Sitelinks search box

What applies today?

Example

Sources