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 [...]

Related Topics: Search & Retail | Search Features: Enhanced Listings

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 [...]

Related Topics: Search & Retail | Search Features: Enhanced Listings

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 [...]

Related Topics: Features: General | Google: Rich Snippets | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Search Features: Enhanced Listings | Top News | Yahoo: Search

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 [...]

Related Topics: Features: General | Google: AdWords | Search Features: Enhanced Listings | Top News

At last, Google has finally gained a page preview feature. Called "Instant Previews," this is a way for you to see what's on a page that's listed in Google's search results without having to leave Google. The new feature seems promising, another way to save time in the searching process, because there's less need for people to "pogostick" with their search results. Pogosticking is when someone clicks from a search listing to a page, then clicks back if unsatisfied to select another result and so on. With the new Instant Previews, they may be better able to immediately spot the most p [...]

Related Topics: Features: General | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Search Features: Enhanced Listings | Top News