Mar 28, 2012 at 8:53am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google has expanded the search descriptions to show the "top answer" and sometimes the "question" for discussion forum like search results. For example, a search for ["incoming search terms"] in Google returns results from Google Groups and StackOverflow and in those snippets, it shows the "top answer" listed in the forum. Here is a picture: Both these forums support the functionality of labeling an answer to the question as a "top answer." Google is clearly picking up on that, structuring the data as such and then displaying that directly in the search results. This is all likel [...]

MicroData For Marketing Executives

Oct 13, 2011 at 12:09pm ET by Mark Sprague

This continues the analysis presented in the MicroData Not Ready For Primetime article previously published. Here, I break down the MicroData hierarchy into three levels so marketing professionals can review each category to see what value it can bring to future marketing, content and SEO initiatives. When you look at the type schema you see close to 300 metadata elements that can describe various entities (called Things here). There is lot of specificity in a few categories such as Local Businesses, Civic Structures and Events. Two of these categories have real implications for local a [...]

MicroData & Retail Products: Not Ready For Primetime?

Sep 8, 2011 at 9:44am ET by Mark Sprague

If you are in the search engine business, the functionality in the Microdata specification sponsored by Google, Yahoo and Bing is a very attractive way to theoretically improve search results. Enterprise search engines are well-versed with named entity extraction tools and techniques, which is how this information has been generated in the past decade. The major search engines are essentially telling content providers that if they name all their entities in their content, they can do a better job of extracting meaning from them to help improve search results. This is a win-win propositio [...]

Schema.org: Google, Bing & Yahoo Unite To Make Search Listings Richer Through Structured Data

Jun 2, 2011 at 1:08pm ET by Vanessa Fox

Today, "in the spirit of sitemaps.org", Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have announced the joint alliance of schema.org. This alliance provides a common foundation of support for a set of microdata types -- some that previously existed and some that have been created as part of this initiative. Microdata is a type of structured mark up that can be used to provide semantic meaning to content on web pages. The microdata types currently supported are documented at schema.og. You can also take a look at the announcements from each search engine on their blogs: Google: Introducing schema.org: S [...]

Google Testing Instant Previews On Ads (Here’s What It Looks Like)

Apr 20, 2011 at 1:52pm ET by Matt McGee

Google is testing a new feature that marries its Instant Previews with AdWords. The test gives searchers a chance to see the ad's landing page without clicking on the ad. As you can see, all of the ads on the screenshot above -- whether above the organic results or in the right column -- are showing the small magnifying glass icon for Instant Previews. The preview image itself seems to be work exactly as the feature works in organic search; the search query, "lcd tvs" in this case, is called out and shown in bold on the preview. When Instant Previews launched in November, Danny Sulli [...]

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