SEO - Add google sitelinks search box for URL sub path

Question

Is it possible and usefull to add a google sitelinks search box to a sub path of the website?

For instance we have following structure with site in sites for our clients:

• Main search: www.example.com
• Site of client 1: www.example.com/clients/client1
• Site of client 2: www.example.com/clients/client2

Can we now create three google sitelinks search boxes? One for us and two for our clients

• www.example.com/?query={queryTerm}
• www.example.com/clients/client1/?query={queryTerm}
• www.example.com/clients/client2/?query={queryTerm}

If we can create them will it be honored by google displaying the search box for the client search in case the client site is first result?

https://developers.google.com/structured-data/slsb-overview

Answer 1

The sitelinks process is described here https://developers.google.com/structured-data/slsb-overview

While I've not tried it myself it may work, but would rely on someone typing example.com client1 (for instance) to show them. You may need to use trial and error to see if it works, add sitelinks to http://example.com/clients/client1/index.html http://example.com/clients./client2/index.html and http://example.com/index.html

with the correct query string for all. Make you you test searching for example or example.com not site:example.com

Answer 2

In simple words, No you can't do that.

You can place sitemap markup data in your homepage only, it will not work, if you placed in your subpath/subdirectory/subfolder or in your client site.

In reality those big sites, did not added sitelink markup data in homepage, it is automatically created by Google. Just search on Google "Stackexchange", and you will see it's it is created automatically by Google, for all sub-domains.