Rich Snippet displays additional data from other pages about the resources being displayed in the search result. In order to work, webmasters must incorporate open standards such as microdata, microformats or RDFa in their web pages. Google does not guarantee that the use of these open standards will result in Rich Snippets, but webmasters have the option to contact Google for its inclusion.
Why use Rich Snippets?
The listing with the Rich Snippet ranked higher than the listing without.
Snippets—the few lines of text that appear under every search result—are designed to give users a sense for what’s on the page and why it’s relevant to their query.
If Google understands the content on your pages, it can create rich snippets, detailed information intended to help users with specific queries. For example, the snippet for a restaurant might show the average review and price range; the snippet for a recipe page might show the total preparation time, a photo, and the recipe’s review rating; and the snippet for a music album could list songs along with a link to play each song. These rich snippets help users recognize when your site is relevant to their search, and may result in more clicks to your pages.
Types of Rich Snippets:
- Breadcrumbs
- Events
- Music
- Organizations
- People
- Products
- Recipes
- Review ratings
- Reviews
- Software applications
- Videos
How to implement?
Pick a data format and include the markup in your content. Google suggests using microdata, as outlined at schema.org, but any of the three formats below are acceptable. You don’t need any prior knowledge of these formats, just a basic knowledge of HTML.
Mark your content. Google supports rich snippets for these content types:
- Reviews
- People
- Products
- Businesses and organizations
- Recipes
- Events
- Music
You can find formatting help here.
Next test your data with the Rich Snippet Tool.
Make sure to also setup Google Authorship
Why again you ask? Simply because the page with the Google Authorship tag ranked higher than the listing without.
- Create a Google+ Profile
- Remember to upload a high quality headshot and fill out some profile information such as hometown, etc.
- Go to plus.google.com/authorship, sign up with your email and click on the verification link sent to you.
If you don’t want to verify your email address, you can also link your content to your Google profile.
Set up authorship by linking your content to your Google+ profile Create a link to your Google+ profile from your webpage, like this:
[box type="shadow" ]<a href="[profile_url]?rel=author">Google</a>[/box]
Replace [profile_url] with the your Google+ profile URL, like this:
[box type="shadow" ]<a href="https://plus.google.com/112643716740116237079?rel=author">Google</a>[/box]
Your link must contain the ?rel=author parameter. If it’s missing, Google won’t be able to associate your content with your Google+ profile.
Add a reciprocal link back from your profile to the site(s) you just updated.
Edit the Contributor To section of your Google+ profile. In the dialog that appears, click Add custom link, and then enter the website URL. If you want, click the drop-down list to specify who can see the link. Click Save.
Done
That’s it! Once you've added and tested your rich snippets markup, Google will discover it the next time we crawl your site. A few points to note:
- It may take some time for rich snippets to appear in search results or Place Pages.
- If rich snippets aren't appearing for your site, see possible reasons why.
- Marking up your data for rich snippets won't affect your page's ranking in search results, and Google doesn’t guarantee to use your markup.
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