12 May, 2009
Google adding "rich snippets" to search results using microformats
Posted by Ben Rowland in Web technology, Marketing,
Google is rolling out a new "rich snippet" feature in their search results. Initially, this snippet provides support for reviews and people, but theoretically could support any variety structured data.
The idea is that your search results can show up looking like this:
The star ratings in the image above are generated through the use of microformats, which is a way for developers to structure their HTML in a way that can be interpreted by search engines that support either microformats or RDFa. In this case, certain microformats or RDFa XHTML markup tags have indicated to Google that the indexed document contains a 4-star restaurant rating.
Read Google's rich snippets announcement. If you are a developer or website operator interested in having Google support your microformats, Google asks that you contact them. Also, Google has recommendations on marking up structured data on your web pages.