How do you get microformat / Rich Snippets to show up on Google search results
Table of Contents
Promote Your Content with Structured Data Markup
“Structured data markup” is a standard way to annotate your content so machines can understand it. When your web pages include structured data markup, Google (and other search engines) can use that data to index your content better, present it more prominently in search results, and surface it in new experiences like voice answers, maps, and Google Now.
Structured data markup makes your content eligible for two kinds of Google features:
- Enhanced Presentation in Search Results: By including basic structured data appropriate to your content, your site can enhance its search results with Rich Snippets, Breadcrumbs, or a Sitelinks Search Box.
About schema.org
Google and other major search engines support the schema.org vocabulary for structured data. This vocabulary defines a standard set of type names and property names, for example, http://schema.org/MusicEvent indicates a concert performance, with startDate and and location properties to specify the concert’s key details.
Data in the schema.org vocabulary may be embedded in an HTML page using any of three alternative formats: microdata, RDFa, and JSON-LD.
- Microdata and RDFa define new HTML attributes that let you indicate what schema.org field names correspond with what user-visible text on the page.
- JSON-LD is the newest and simplest markup format: it lets you embed a block of JSON data inside a
scripttag anywhere in the HTML. Since the data does not have to be interleaved with the user-visible text, it’s much easier to express nested data items (say, the Country of a PostalAddress of a MusicVenue of an Event). Also, Google can read JSON-LD data even when it is dynamically injected into the page’s contents, such as by Javascript code or embedded “widgets”.Google is in the process of adding JSON-LD support to more markup-powered features. So far, JSON-LD is supported for all Knowledge Graph features, sitelink search boxes, and Event Rich Snippets; Google recommends the use of JSON-LD for those features. For the remaining Rich Snippets types and breadcrumbs, Google recommends the use of microdata or RDFa.
Rich snippets and markup can be a bit confusing but well worth learning more about especially when it relates to your search results in
Google.
The reason for this is that search results which display these type of markup often achieve a significantly higher click through rate as they attract more attention for various reasons.
RICH SNIPPET TESTING TOOL
If you’ve added a plugin or used microformat schema markup to verify ownership of your content, you may want to test your sites url’s to make sure your posts have been attributed to you as the author.
If you don’t see your image next to the snippet in the search engines results pages, you can check your ownership by entering url’s of your website pages and posts using your Google+ profile url.
If you haven’t setup a profile pic on your author box correctly or haven’t setup a Google+ account yet, then i suggest you do this as well.
Google Testing Tool
https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/
Mark it up with microformats
You can markup the following with extra information for Google:
- Reviews
- People
- Products
- Businesses
- Recipes
- Events
To check and verify your ownership you can use Google’s testing tool.
Step 1) Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
Step 2) Enter the url from a page or post you want to test which you have authored.
Step 3) After you’ve entered a url to a post you have authored, click the preview button. You’ll then see the snippet which is displayed in the search results.
Step 4) You’ll notice under the snippet in the screenshot above, Extracted Author/Publisher for this page.
Step 5) Verification complete
PAGE DOES NOT CONTAIN AUTHORSHIP MARKUP
Generally, pages on WordPress sites don’t include an author box so you’ll need a Google+ Profile with a headshot as your profile picture.
After you’ve created your account and added an image, verify authorship of your content by associating it with your profile using either of the methods below.
- Link your content to your Google+ profile using a verified email address.
- Use the following instructions to set up authorship by linking your content to your Google+ profile
Create a link to your Google+ profile from your WordPress pages
<a href=”[profile_url]?rel=author”>Google</a>
- Replace [profile_url] with the your Google+ profile URL:
- Your link must contain the
?rel=authorparameter. If it’s missing, Google won’t be able to associate your content with your Google+ profile. - Add a reciprocal link back from your profile to the site(s) you just updated.
- Edit the Contributor To section.
- In the dialog that appears, click Add custom link, and then enter the website URL.
- If you want, click the drop-down list to specify who can see the link.
- Click Save.
Be patient
I’ve submitted Lookaly at least 10 times over the past 2 years and have never heard back from Google (even when they accepted us).
I don’t know how they work but all I can do is assume they only approve websites that they see as:
- A reliable source of reviews
- Have a substantial amount of reviews
- Are marked up correctly
