Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 12:00 PM
Webmaster Level: AllAs a webmaster, you have a unique understanding of your web pages and the content they represent. Google helps users find your page by showing them a small sample of that content -- the "snippet." We use a variety of techniques to create these snippets and give users relevant information about what they'll find when they click through to visit your site. Today, we're announcing Rich Snippets, a new presentation of snippets that applies Google's algorithms to highlight structured data embedded in web pages.
Rich Snippets give users convenient summary information about their search results at a glance. We are currently supporting data about reviews and people. When searching for a product or service, users can easily see reviews and ratings, and when searching for a person, they'll get help distinguishing between people with the same name. It's a simple change to the display of search results, yet our experiments have shown that users find the new data valuable -- if they see useful and relevant information from the page, they are more likely to click through. Now we're beginning the process of opening up this successful experiment so that more websites can participate. As a webmaster, you can help by annotating your pages with structured data in a standard format.
To display Rich Snippets, Google looks for markup formats (microformats and RDFa) that you can easily add to your own web pages. In most cases, it's as quick as wrapping the existing data on your web pages with some additional tags. For example, here are a few relevant lines of the HTML from Yelp's review page for "Drooling Dog BarBQ" before adding markup data:
and now with microformats markup:
or alternatively, use RDFa markup. Either format works:
By incorporating standard annotations in your pages, you not only make your structured data available for Google's search results, but also for any service or tool that supports the same standard. As structured data becomes more widespread on the web, we expect to find many new applications for it, and we're excited about the possibilities.
To ensure that this additional data is as helpful as possible to users, we'll be rolling this feature out gradually, expanding coverage to more sites as we do more experiments and process feedback from webmasters. We will make our best efforts to monitor and analyze whether individual websites are abusing this system: if we see abuse, we will respond accordingly.
To prepare your site for Rich Snippets and other benefits of structured data on the web, please see our documentation on structured data annotations.
Now, time for some Q&A with the team:
If I mark up my pages, does that guarantee I'll get Rich Snippets?
No. We will be rolling this out gradually, and as always we will use our own algorithms and policies to determine relevant snippets for users' queries. We will use structured data when we are able to determine that it helps users find answers sooner. And because you're providing the data on your pages, you should anticipate that other websites and other tools (browsers, phones) might use this data as well. You can let us know that you're interested in participating by filling out this form.
What about other existing microformats? Will you support other types of information besides reviews and people?
Not every microformat corresponds to data that's useful to show in a search result, but we do plan to support more of the existing microformats and define RDFa equivalents.
What's next?
We'll be continuing experiments with new types (beyond reviews and people) and hope to announce support for more types in the future.
I have too much data on my page to mark it all up.
That wasn't a question, but we'll answer anyway. For the purpose of getting data into snippets, we don't need every bit of data: it simply wouldn't fit. For example, a page that says it has "497 reviews" of a product probably has data for 10 and links to the others. Even if you could mark up all 497 blocks of data, there is no way we could fit it into a single snippet. To make your part of this grand experiment easier, we have defined aggregate types where necessary: a review-aggregate can be used to summarize all the review information (review count, average/min/max rating, etc.).
Why do you support multiple encodings?
A lot of previous work on structured data has focused on debates around encoding. Even within Google, we have advocates for microformat encoding, advocates for various RDF encodings, and advocates for our own encodings. But after working on this Rich Snippets project for a while, we realized that structured data on the web can and should accommodate multiple encodings: we hope to emphasize this by accepting both microformat encoding and RDFa encoding. Each encoding has its pluses and minuses, and the debate is a fine intellectual exercise, but it detracts from the real issues.
We do believe that it is important to have a common vocabulary: the language of object types, object properties, and property types that enable structured data to be understood by different applications. We debated how to address this vocabulary problem, and concluded that we needed to make an investment. Google will, working together with others, host a vocabulary that various Google services and other websites can use. We are starting with a small list, which we hope to extend over time.
Wherever possible, we'll simply reuse vocabulary that is in wide use: we support the pre-existing vCard and hReview types, and there are a variety of other types defined by various communities. Sites that use Google Custom Search will be able to define their own types, which we will index and present to users in rich Custom Search results pages. Finally, we encourage and expect this space to evolve based on new ideas from the structured data community. We'll notice and reach out when our crawlers pick up new types that are getting broad use.
Update on November 1, 2009: Check out our update on Rich Snippets!
58 comments:
Google's example hReview has an invalid "dtreviewed" (date reviewed) property - the value must be ISO8601 compliant. Another example has an invalid invalid “rating” property (the value must be numeric). the documentation neglects to point out that the value must be "...out of five", unless a range is marked-up.
The list of hCard microformat properties for ORGanisations omits the essential "org" (though it is used in the example given).
Google's recognition of hCard microformats is partial - no telephone, fax, e-mail, PO Box, etc.
Bad documentation and implementation by a leading player like Google will lead to masses of broken implementations by those who follow their lead.
However, most worrying is the suggestion that "adding the name of an unknown reviewer will dilute the effect of the Google snippet and could make the page appear less relevant". SEO voodoo should not trump semantic mark-up. That’s shameful.
I’d be happy to work with you to fix these problems; and the broken microformats emitted by Google Maps and Google Profiles; and to implement the "species" microformat for the scientific names of living things.
Quote:
<div xmlns:v="http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org" typeof="v:review">
So, the URI of this type is "http://rdf.data-vocabulary.orgreview"? That’s not a valid TLD. The other triples in the RDFa example (both here an in the FAQ) have this problem as well.
~Laurens
Why in the world would I want to short change myself a possible visit by giving Google more information to list on the SERP, when I want that visitor on my site?
Sure does change the prospect of conversions and bounce rates.
@incrediblehelp:
Quoting from the interview at O’Reilly:
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/05/google-adds-microformat-parsin.html
“And from our experiments, it seemed that giving the user a better idea of what to expect on the page increases the click-through rate on the search results. So if the webmasters do` this, it's really good for them. They get more traffic. It's good for users because they have a better idea of what to expect on the page. And, overall, it's good for the web.”
So why didnt website snap shots ever chat on? We should always be cautious of how much info/content we give other websites to us on their pages.
@incrediblehelp: so why did RSS catch on, then?
@Grauw RSS is mutually beneficial. Please prove how this is beneficial to the websites long term? Imagine people sorting buy reviews? Then only websites with 4-5 star reviews for certian products would show on the Google SERP. All that sorting happens on Google property SERP as well.
I'm really Excited about the possibilities for locally based websites to get their info into the serps, which helps contact rate!
This should be interesting,It's certainly a fun time to be an SEO as these changes roil around. I just got used to the Enhances/extended serps that pull context from the page...
Wow, thanks for this addition to the webmaster's toolbox! I think the advantages (for website owners) outweigh the disadvantages here; however, let's not forget that Google is a for-profit company with no obligation to do what's best for the websites it indexes. Google's obligation is to serve its advertisers and its audience (searchers).
I'm looking forward to implementing for my clients. Great work Goog!
Gradiva Couzin
Will Google reuse existing RDF vocabularies like foaf and review? Why did Google 'invest' in http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/ when all the terms it invents are already available in widely deployed well known vocabularies like FOAF, Review, vCard, etc?
What if you don't do 1-5 scale, but rankings of 1-X (where X is # of services/businesses/products ranked).
Great i can just see spammers taking this new development to a whole new level, and smaller sights not being included in the "gradual rollout" so it will be just be big retailers such as Amazon who will benefit. Many sites dont use a out of five value, and if you get hit with a number of negative reviews because the product is bad or because of spam that could destroy your sales...
It is another issue to look out for, do you get flagged for spam if your old score was 4.5 and the user found when they visited the site your product was actually rated 4...
Im sure some CMS systems like wordpress maybe the first to have modules rolled out that can take advantage of this, but is there any rush?
So at long last Google adopts the Semantic Web model of data for Web 3.0. Don't you think they owe the w3c a grant? Read more here http://oxfordseo.com/blog
where can i find the attribute "pricerange" google uses in there example here? is there a specification where this attribute is described?
@The Lost Agency: although during the rollout period big sites may go first to be able to timely detect spam issues, RDFa allows everyone to provide this kind of data no matter your size, and even make your own extensions.
By using RDFa and microformats instead of custom site-specific parsers (like is the case now for e.g. video search), this is especially designed to allow every site be indexed, and not just the major players.
Once again an opportunity for an even playing field emerges. This is the USP of Internet development: it's resistence to prprietary ownership of any innovation.
Semantic Web is just the latest factor in an ongoing pattern of shifting the traditional commercial paradigm.
Well done, sir Berner-Lee
I think Rich Snippets will be interesting for many webmasters but I noticed that on http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=146645 you have code error in "Example: Microformat" span class="reviewer" is closed by /div. Should it be - closed by /span ?:)
I'm REALLY looking forward to this feature!
I've been trying like heck to help google find information about our local businesses, to help the local economy in Collier County, Florida.
The last few hundred business entries in my directory, I've been adding an hCard version on the page. Now I'm about to do a massive update of the pages (and it's a pain because it's free text names/addresses, not neatly in a city/state/zip format), but before I do that (there's about 36,000 to be done), I want to make SURE I'm using the correct format.
I notice that for the hCard examples, Google's example uses "span" where the microformats.org uses "abbr". Before I make the changes, I want to do it right, because it'll be absoluely IMPOSSIBLE for me to undo it all.
I'll be happy to set it up with RDFa, microformats, even adding an hReview setup to make comments into reviews for that business. I want to be Google compliant!
But I want to do it right. So hopefully, someone from Google will contact me and let me know the "best" way to encode my business pages, as I have a lot of good, working businesses on my site that Google just doesn't have yet.
So if I have a business name, address, city, state, zip, lat, long, how would I best handle it?
One sample I have is: (replace ( with <) :
(div class='vcard')(a class='fn org url' href='http://free.naplesplus.us/articles/view.php/52/American-Handyman')AMERICAN HANDYMAN(/a)(div class='adr')(span class='street-address')9360 Marino Circle 204(/span) (span class='locality')NAPLES(/span) (span class='region')FL(/span) (span class='postal-code')34101(/span) (/div) (span class='geo')(abbr class='latitude' title='26.129776')26.129776, (/abbr)(abbr class='longitude' title='-81.685057')-81.685057(/abbr)(/span)(/div)
I hope that's "good Google" format.
It shouldn't be hard to convert that, plus my existing rating + comment system, to be in hReview format. Somebody lemme know :-)
Hi,
Will you include the structured data in the result page? This would open up to everyone the ability to build services using the data returned by your searches. That would be extremely cool (especially if using RDFa)
The web of data: "Welcome Google, really!"
;-)
I love this it could be very good for our business.
Also I've been asking around for a while but is this also the way to get reviews listed on local business ads? Such as the tripadvisor ones here? http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_en-GBGB291GB304&ei=kdcLSsLYFJi5jAe96_GrBg&resnum=0&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=pod+hotel+new+york&fb=1&split=1&gl=uk&view=text&latlng=3049182827536070553&dtab=2&pcsi=3049182827536070553,1&ei=k9cLSoH9OtLMjAfav7nGBg&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=result&resnum=1
Hhhhm, incredible help does have a point that you want to seal the deal when a user is on site, not on a google results page (does anyone else see this as a sneaky way for google to keep users on their pages?). But i see there being big benefits for certain sites (such as yelp).
We are essentially seeing the movement of google towards a comparison site and the reduction of "higher rankings = higher click thrus". If users can now see different metrics which help them decide what site is the most relevant then that's great (if you're at number 5 but you've got the cheapest product).
Overall, i see this as one of those changes that might reduce traffic but increase it's relevance.
Where can we find more details about the hreview-aggregate microformat. I searched for it in our favourite search engine with not much luck. Apart from a fairly sparse Google page describing it, I can't find anything in more detail. There doesn't seem to be any information about this on microformats.org . Or maybe I'm just missing it, in which case I would greatly appreciate a link.
When will it work on Google Search Appliances?
the google documentation specifies for "review":
----
rating: A numerical quality rating for the item (for example, 4) based on a scale of 1-5. You can optionally specify worst (default: 1) or best (default: 5)
----
can you please make an example how to specify a rating-range from 0 (worst) to 6 (best)? i couldn't find any examples.
Tim: As Thomas says, you can use `best` and `worst` classes to specify a different scale; 0.0–5.0 being the default. An example is:
≺p≻I give the food a
≺span class='rating'≻4.5≺/span≻
out of
≺span class='best'≻10≺/span≻
≺/p≻
You can find more examples on the microformats wiki: hReview examples page, along with the full specification.
Peter: The hReview Aggregate format is still in early development. You can find documentation at aggregate review brainstorming.
Does the rich snippet available in other countries than US ?
@Thomas: I have seen no indication that Google will parse such values. Have you.
@Ben, seeing as how the documentation is so sparse on this and we are early movers - any chance you can have a quick look over
our implementation to see if it would be crawled correctly?
Much appreciated if so. Understood if not.
In particular, I'm not sure if it is ok to specify all these on the one element: div class="hreview-aggregate item vcard"
Another format to consider would be "tutorial". Similar fields to "hreview" but the rating would run from "1.0" (Basic) to "5.0" (Advanced).
I'd like to see that implemented.
Within a div for a microformat such as hReview, can other html be included that is not one of the supported fields?
Does anyone know if the review will show up as a seperate google listing from the indexed page itself?
Will the Google Friend Connect rating code be automatically included? Or would we be responsible for adding these tags to the dynamic Javascript that outputs the rating code?
Are search snipplets available for non-google.com domains? Ex: Google.ca, google.co.uk?
hello
can i use any tags with rdf ? (a, div, span, h1 etc.)
This sounds like a really great idea. As I run a book review blog I have already modified my Blogger template so that each review post is marked up with hReview Microformat code. It is fairly easy to modify the blog widget so that post bodies are marked up as description of summary structures, and the post title is marked as the title of the review.
I use post tags to detect the rating and output the rating within a Microformat rating structure.
Anyway, I figure it's worth a try to implement structured markup. I tried submitting my blog for the rich snippets testing period, but no response. ;)
Maybe in the long run I'll be approved for rich snippets, and if so I look forward to it.
Nathan
So, a couple of questions:
- Are hproducts only discovered/parsed within the context of hreviews, or should we be marking up products by themselves - e.g. http://www.snugbaby.co.uk/shop/baby-carriers/ready-made-slings.html - would Google recognize this hproduct markup?
- If hproducts can be crawled, and extracted - where does this leave froogle and it's feed mechanism? Presumably if Google can slurp all the info they need from microformat marked-up standard pages - why maintain an extra tool?
Very excited about this.
A few questions.
I use a rating scale of 1-10 can RDFa support this?
I also have editor and user reviews, can these be marked up seperatly?
Where is the best place to ask and answer questions and about getting my markup correct?
Thanks!
How do I write better snippets for my affiliate websites, via article directories?
I see that Google "supports" hCard, but I don't quite get how it manifests in search results. Can anyone elaborate?
and another question: Why H1 is surrounded by a span? its a xhtml validation error. Block level element cannot and should not be nested inside inline elements
As said before- its bed to place it here in your documentations and set a bed example for future studants of the web.
Besides saying that, great and marvelous work, especially after listening for this podcast with Google engineers
Thanks Google. I love this direction you are going to :)
vere good tanhs google
On web-master tools - Why would the external links show a site that is not linking to my site, and they are really my competition?
Hello,
Does google read information from the site when I use RDF in XML format instead of the RDFa?
most of the format codes are not valid XHTML. When i try validate my pages with microformats on w3 validator it gives a lot of errors. This problem has to be solved first imo.
Whilst conducting a search for the Nokia N900, I clicked on 'Show more Shopping Sites' from the left hand navigation.
http://www.google.com/search?q=nokia+n900&hl=en&tbs=cpk:1&prmd=snvli&ei=7-AhTPTJIdmVsQbptqDmBQ&start=0&sa=N
There are various sites that appear to be using Rich Snippets to show different deal prices for the handsets. Most sites are price comparisons sites, but not all.
Does anyone know this is done?
It's very strange. In most of them I couldn't find any mf/rdfa/mf in their code.
I am running a cell phones website.
I would like to use rich snippets for that with image, rating and price range.
Do you think I should use Recipe tool to achieve this?
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=173379
or
Is there any other way to do this?
Will it harm my SEO ranking if I use Recipe for cell phone website?
Looking forward to hear your valuable feedback.
Thanks,
Mazy
I'd like to know if it's possible to use both vcard and hreview in the same page. I'm testing my page on rich snippets test tools and there's a message "Warning: This information will not appear as a rich snippet in search results results, because it seems to describe an organization. Google does not currently display organization information in rich snippets" but it's showing just in vcard block not to hreview.
Hi, I have a question regarding the legal terms of this (and perhabs of search engines in general, I'm not sure).
I've always been very interested in this kind of representation, but from a "Desktop" perspective. Making a minimalistic presentation of bloated websites for my own personal use.
Since IMDb.com's "Conditions of Use" state:
"You may not use data mining, robots, screen scraping, or similar data gathering and extraction tools on this site, except with our express written consent",
my question is this:
Q: How is it legal to publish the IMDb rating (even with reference to imdb.com)? Does Google have an agreement with IMDb, or is there some Search Engine Law which allows excerpts from indexed pages?
Thanks for any elaboration on the matter.
hi,
thanks for addition to the webmaster's toolbox.
Its really nice
This would have been helpful if you had put the relevant code snippets with the new markup in text big enough to read. The rest of the page is bigger. Why did you make the important information unreadable?
Hi Raven if you click on the images you'll be able to view them larger. Hope this helps.
Justin
Hi,
I have added Rich Snippets on my website 2 weeks ago, but it does not appears on Google search results pages.
How long does it take ?
Is it automatic ? Or is there a a control by Google to accept rich snippet or not ?
I've added these on all my website but nothing showed up... :/
Hi,
I have put in place rich snippets on my page 4 months ago, and still no results in google search pages.
F.i. : http://www.roadtrippin.fr/arizona/antelope-canyon/antelope-canyon.php
What is the problem ?
How set up Rich Snippets in Custom Search results on blogspot. my blog http://www.lampeace.com, I hope to answer is best and what influence schema.org put on the blog, my schema has been applied on blogspot. thanks google
really i don't understand, can you give me a sample page
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