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Rich Snippets: Increase Google Visibility for Reviews through Microformats

May 13, 2009 by Adam Sherk

One of the announcements at Searchology yesterday was a new enhancement called Rich Snippets, in which Google is using structured data embedded in web pages (microformats and RDFa) to give users “convenient summary information about their search results at a glance.”

Initially Google is supporting data on reviews and people. Reviews in particular offer a good opportunity for publishers as many content sites produce multiple types of reviews on a regular basis. Through Rich Snippets you can draw greater attention to your listings in the search results which helps to increase clickthroughs to your content.

Here’s an example Rich Snippet from a Yelp listing for restaurant in New York that I like:

Google Rich Snippet for Turkish Kitchen NYC

To take advantage of this opportunity you need to add microformat or RDFa markup to the source code of your review pages, which is pretty straightforward. You can follow Google’s guidelines for marking up structured data to learn how to do it, including the specific properties for reviews.

It’s important to note that marking up your pages doesn’t guarantee that your listings will get Rich Snippets as Google says they will be rolling them out gradually. But now is a good time to begin experimenting with it.

For more information check out:

  • Introducing Rich Snippets
  • Google Search Now Supports Microformats and Adds “Rich Snippets” to Search Results

UPDATE:
Since the initial introduction Google has added Rich Snippets support for video and events.

Related posts:

  1. Google Social Search: Are You in Your Target Audiences’ Social Circles?
  2. Yahoo Adds Enhanced News Results to SearchMonkey
  3. Does Google Freshness Update Make Online Reputation Management More Difficult?
  4. Do Google’s Expanded Domain Results Apply to News and Video Listings?
  5. Does Social Media Increase a Journalist’s Value?

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About Adam Sherk

Adam Sherk is an SEO and PR consultant helping publishers with digital strategy and audience development, including enterprise SEO, public relations and social media marketing.

Adam is VP SEO and Digital Strategy for Define Media Group.

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