Google Search Options Supports RDFa And Microformats Including hReview, hCard And hProduct

I viewed Google’s last Searchology event a couple of years ago when they launched Universal Search.  That single event was a game changer in the search industry.  Vertical searches by media type (video, images, maps, books, web pages, etc) were blended together within main search results.

Well, Google has done it again!  Yesterday at the second Searchology event, Google announced the adoption of Microformats and RDFa, a structured format of data.  This is another game changer that search marketers need to be aware of.

Similar to Yahoo’s Search Monkey, website owners who use microformats or RDFa to format their content may have it displayed within Google search results. Google has a never ending quest of delivering results that are the closest match to the intent of the user’s search query and to offer other relevant results that could benefit their search further.

Google has enhanced search result snippets by adding content from website pages such as Reviews, People Contact Information, Business and Organization Information and Products.  Let’s take a closer look at what data types are supported for each of these and how they can be implemented.

Reviews

Google supports both the RDFa Review and Microformat hReview property.  This means that any website that offers reviews and have formatted their data by using these properties may have their content displayed as a “rich snippet” within their ranked search result listing.

The data displayed includes:

• Name of Item
• Rating
• Reviewer Name
• Review Date
• Description Body of the Review

More information on how to structure your review content for Google is here.

People, Business and Organization Contact Information

The hCard property has been supported by Google Maps for some time and now it is being rolled out into general search results, although I have not seen any examples of this as yet.  Google supports both RDFa Contact and Microformat’s hCard property.  Even though the hCard property is suitable for individuals and organizations, RDFa provides a separate property for organizations called RDFa Organization.

The data displayed for personal contact information includes:

• Name
• Nickname
• URL
• Affiliation / Organization
• Address
• Street Address
• Locality (City)
• Region
• Post Code
• Country
• Photo
• Title / Role

The data displayed for business or organizational contact information includes:

• Organization Name
• URL
• Address
• Street Address
• Locality (City)
• Region
• Post Code
• Country
• Telephone

More information on how to structure your personal and business/organization contact content for Google.

Products

Google recognizes the Microformat hProduct and RDFa Product properties. Again, I have not seen an example of a product displayed within Google results currently.

The data displayed for product information includes:

• Brand
• Category
• Product Description
• Product Name
• Price
• Photo
• Product URL

More information on how to structure your product content for Google is here.

Learn more about Microformats and RDFa.

This recent announcement will keep SEO professionals and website owners very busy for the next while optimizing their sites with RDFa and Microformats. It will be interesting to learn what other formats Google will support and what new Microformats will be created in the future.

On top of this, is the new functionality available within Google Search Options allowing users to filter results by time and content type including videos, images, forums, reviews and text.  Google additionally provides functions “related searches” and “wonder wheel”, a new graphical representation of search words.

Much has happened!  So, does this mean that when we hear when the next Searchology event is scheduled, it is a signal of a major change on Google?  Keep your eyes and ears peeled people.