Google Provides Valuable Information with Enhanced Rich Snippets
Screenshot of Google homepage in beta testing, 1998.
Many of us remember the days of the Google search that produced a simple list of blue hyperlinks. Google then added what they called “snippets” to their presentation – a small preview of pertinent information about each site to entice the reader. On May 12, 2009, Google announced an experimental way of presenting even more information about a website in the form of Rich Snippets.
Google’s Rich Snippets currently encompass two categories — people and reviews. For example, in a search for a person’s name, if several identical names are returned, Rich Snippets will help differentiate between those names by displaying distinguishing information about each person, such as their website, social media profiles, etc. If a search is made for a product or service, Google will display reviews and ratings associated with that product/service (mostly from review sites such as Yelp).
Google gathers this information by looking for structured data embedded in a website, which requires the web developer to add these annotations in a specific markup format -– either microformats (like an hCard) or RDFa.
But Rich Snippets has raised some concerns, particularly with the addition of reviews. Currently, reviews and ratings are not used for indexing or ranking within Google’s search algorithm, but this may change over time, which is troubling because reviews can be easily manipulated. Another concern is that a developer will not be able to pick and choose what information is displayed about their site –- it will be up to Google’s algorithm to decide. There is also the fear that too much information given about a site in a Rich Snippet might lead to searchers finding their answer on Google’s search results page, resulting in fewer click throughs and actual visits to websites from Google.
Google hopes to expand Rich Snippets to other existing microformants once they’ve gathered sufficient feedback about this release. Google also plans to create new applications that will be able to utilize these annotations once developers have it in place.
