What are Rich Snippets and why do we want them?

Rich Snippets is a fancy term for the ability of Google, Yahoo!, and eventually others to enhance and show more information on their search results.

Rich Snippets allows the search results to stand out and give more information to the visitor.  For an ecommerce site this information can include the description, price, stock status, product reviews and potentially an image (Yahoo! will show an image, Google doesn't currently display images).

These snippets come from the search engine's ability to get accurate data from your site.  Currently engines will gather the data through Structured Data Markup (Schema.org markup - preferred, RDFa or Microdata).  These different forms of markup add tags to your page so search engines can accurately pull data for your pricing, reviews, etc...

• Google's information on their Structured Data rich snippets: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99170
• Google's information on shopping site Structured Data rich snippets: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/11/rich-snippets-for-shopping-sites.html

What is Video Markup?

Google says videos are one of the most common types of search results.  Google launched video support for schema.org tags (Structured Data) to help describe videos on the web. According to Google, using schema.org markup for your videos will not affect any Video Sitemaps you already use.  We recommend employing both Video Markup AND Video Sitemaps because they alert Google to your new or updated videos more quickly. Structured Data markup is a great way to tell Google about your videos.  Your Store Wizards are here to help make it happen.

What is Structured Data?

Structured Data or "schema tags" is a way of marking up the content on a page so search engines can properly pull out information.  Microdata is readable by Google, Yahoo! and Bing.  Schema.org markup, our preferred format, is slightly easier to implement than other markup formats and is supported by Bing, Google, and Yahoo (and potentially other engines).

Bing, Google and Yahoo! are all part of a coalition behind schema.org and it does not require changes to "doctypes".

• Schema.org markup is a straightforward implementation.
• Schema.orgmarkup is supported by Yahoo!, Google, and BING and is considered a VALID format.
• Provides key information for Structured Data (Rich Snippets).
• Schema.org markup requires NO doctype changes or mods to the opening HTML tag.

For better chances of your data being indexed on search results pages we recommend the Structured Data (Schema.org) markup implementation.