Just in March Google announced that it would be altering the SERP result page to increase the amount of information that the description would give for long tail searches. It started pulling additional context from the page, in addition to the information it may pull from DMOZ. Google has upped the Ante… Today at Searchology among other new programs the most important change for SEOers and Website owners in my opinion is “Rich Snippets“. Here’s an example of a “Rich Snippet” from Google’s Search Result Page.
So essentially by using RDF markup and Microtagging you can utlize special markup on page and that information will actually be utilized in the Google Serps. These types of Microtags have been used in the past but this is the first time Google has announced that they’re using this information. It will be interesting to see how this change roll out will affect Google’s fortunes. While Matt Cutts says that this change will roll out slowly for specific searches at first, but there’s a form where you can indicate you’d like to participate.
Adopt Early
If you’re a small business website and your trying to get your information displayed more prominently then add the microformats to your address or if you offer online products, be sure to add the proper tags!
3 responses so far ↓
John Jones // May 13, 2009 at 11:48 am |
I’ve been working on an organization site for some time now. I have individual profile pages for roughly 140 or so members and a dozen Board Members.
I now have some micro formatting to take care of on each profile and have just filled out the form at Google (thanks for that link btw).
This should prove to be interesting and educational at the least should Google not go too far with this. Since Matt announced it I am guessing it isn’t going away any time soon. Time to adapt.
Gryfino // May 15, 2009 at 10:05 am |
I’m affraid google might take it too far. They have a tendency to do so. Fortunately they often realise their mistakes in time to prevent people from “rioting”.
jeremypenguin // May 17, 2009 at 5:33 pm
I agree Gryfino, Google does push as far as they can when it comes to taking more and more information from sites to display to their users. On the other hand, maybe they have really done the research and shown that click throughs increase when serp info is increased in relevance.