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 allow 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 "Schema Tags" aka: Microdata (a coalition behind Schema.org and the format we prefer), Microformats or RDFa markup.  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 rich snippets: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99170
• Google's information on shopping site rich snippets: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/11/rich-snippets-for-shopping-sites.html

What is a Canonical Tag?

The canonical tag by itself is a tool for Google and other search engines to know where the "primary" page for any content resides.  A canonical tag is generally used to avoid duplicate content issues in case there are multiple pages with similar content or multiple paths to the same page.

Once you have your Canonical Tag set up, you are strongly advised to use a product reviews system and incorporate your review average rating and total number of reviews into the Google feed.  We recommend POWERREVIEWS Express for this purpose.

In the case of Rich Snippets through Google, they use the canonical tag to tie your Google Products Merchant Center feed data to your site so it can be used in Google search results.

The benefits of using a Google Products Merchant Center feed with the canonical tag include both speed of updating (doesn't require Google to crawl your site) and simplicity of installation.

If you don't have a Google Products feed, you should and we can help.  Go to http://www.feedwizards.com and we can get your data feed established ASAP so you don't miss out on the free traffic it provides.

What is Microdata?

Microdata or "schema tags" is a way of marking up the content on a page so search engines can properly pull out the data for rich snippets.  Microdata is readable by Google, Yahoo! and Bing.  Microdata is slightly easier to implement than other markup formats and is supported by Bing, Google, and Yahoo (and potentially other engines).

Microdata is part of a coalition behind schema.org and does not require changes to "doctypes".

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

We recommend stores get a product feed and use the canonical tags at a minimum.  If a store does not have a feed or wants to cover more than Google then we recommend the Microdata markup implementation.

• If you have a Google Products Feed we recommend the Canonical Tag.
• If you don't have a Google Products Feed, we recommend you get one and get the Canonical Tag.
• If you also want to try and get rich snippets on Yahoo! we recommend the Microdata installation.