Google\’s New Rich Snippets Program Offers A New Way To Achieve Higher Search Engine Rankings
By Jane Dawson
As more and more online retailers learn the tricks and techniques to vie for search engine page rankings on Google, the number one search engine on the Internet (claiming well over seventy percent of all searches), it is becoming more and more difficult to achieve the search engine ranking that you would like to have.
Now Google is offering a way to get ahead of the crowd a bit, at least over the short run.
In early May 2009 Google announced its newest algorithm (formula for identifying and evaluating page content), described as the Google Rich Snippets program. The basic snippet is one part of the Google search engine page ranking citation.
Google helps users find your page by showing them a small sample of that content — the snippet. They use a variety of techniques to create these snippets and give users relevant information about what they will find when they click through to visit your site.
For example, if we googled the Four Seasons restaurants in Manhattan, we would see the following citation:
1. The Four Seasons Restaurant - Midtown East - New York Magazine.
Dec 17, 2008. New York’’s power menageries congregate in the city’’s greatest dining room. See the review of this American Nouveau restaurant at 99 E. 52nd.
The snippets are the small phrases that help describe the sites content. Google’’s Rich Snippets program will now search for properly identified summary information that will give enhanced information to the reader.
For example, the Rich Snippets program searches for ratings information and creates a display such as the one below:
1. The Four Seasons Restaurant - Midtown East - New York, NY
2. 30 reviews - Price range: $$$$
3. 30 Reviews of The Four Seasons Restaurant I suggest that you wear black when you dine at the Four Seasons. Floral patterns, neon colors, bright stripes …
Line two containing the review information (the original citation also included five stars) gives immediate ratings information to the user.
Google is rolling out the program slowly, evaluating as they go. At this time, they are employing Rich Snippets for 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 will get help distinguishing between people with the same name.
It is a simple change to the display of search results, but, according to Google, their 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. They are now in the process of opening up this successful experiment so that more websites can participate.
To display Rich Snippets, Google looks for markup formats (micro formats and RDFa) that can be easily added to your own web pages. In most cases, it is as quick as wrapping the existing data on your web pages with some additional tags.
If this webmaster language confuses you, refer your web master to Google’’s webmaster support answer 99170.
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