Microdata for "rich snippets"
3 February 2013
The major search engines have finally agreed on a meta markup format for identifying certain types of information on websites. The schema includes: Events, Places, Businesses, Products and other similar data.
After a few tests we have now started adding the relevant tags to our hosted websites and integrating it into the CMS. This doesn't change anything for human visitors, but will provide an extra layer of information for search engines.
Google, for example, will sometimes use the structured data to provide "rich snippets" under links to the relevant pages in the search results listing.
For example, the Hall and District Community website now appears in Google search with the following extra snippet:
Mon, Mar 11 National Sheep Dog Trials - Hall Showground
Tue, Mar 12 Party at the Shops - Victoria Street
Sun, Mar 24 Twilight Concert - Hall School grounds
and the Gday Pubs town listings now display pub details directly in search results:
5+ items – Join the Gday Pubs team, travelling around Australia, bringing ...
Court House Hotel Court House Hotel 02 6372 ...
Lawson Park Hotel Lawson Park Hotel Boutique Pub style ... 02 6372 ...
For product pages the snippet can include the price, price range or other product details.
We don't decide when and how the various search engines are going to use the information, but it's good practice to have it there just in case, just as we already implement RSS feeds for news items and ICS feeds for calendar dates.
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