Google launches rich cards for movie and recipe websites

Google has announced their next step to rich snippets, the way webmasters can mark up their pages to enrich how Google displays their pages in their search results. They are calling it rich cards.

Rich cards are very similar to rich snippets but use a card carousel feature with a higher resolution image to improve the searcher’s experience.

Here is a photo comparing the three:

Google said rich cards, which are currently only available for recipe and movie sites, use structured markup around those recipes and movie formats. They are only being shown in mobile search results in English for google.com for now. Google hopes to expand it both to more types of sites and more users in the future.

Google has updated their developer site with more documentation and examples to help you learn this new format.

Plus, they added a rich cards report in the Google Search Console. It has indexing rates and error reporting to help you implement them. Here is a photo:

Also, Google said a new “Rich results” filter in Search Analytics (currently in a closed beta) will help you track how your rich cards and rich snippets are doing in search: you’ll be able to drill down and see clicks and impressions for both.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.