If you are a business owner, and have a website as part of your on-line marketing strategy, this bit of news may be of interest to you. Recently, Google announced that it is now supporting what it calls “rich snippets” for local search.

“Rich snippets” is basically Google’s implementation of various “microformats”. Microformats are pieces of structured HTML code that can describe your website page, which in turn will help Google properly classify your website, make it accessible on their Place pages, and also help them understand the content on the page itself.

While it may sound daunting, rich snippets are very easy to implement, and help Google identify information such as reviews, people profiles, business listings, and events. As a simple example, let’s say you have a webpage where you normally list your contact details using the following HTML code:

<p>

   <h4>Bob’s Building Company</h4>

   Contact me, Andrew Other, on:<br />

   Work: 01252 XXXX<br />

   Cell: 0795 XXXXXXX<br /><br />

   Our work address is:<br />

   147 Some Street<br />

   Another Town<br />

   GU8 8AA, UK

</p>

With rich snippets, you can now tell Google what each bit of information represents:

<p class=”vcard”>

   <h4 class=”org”>Bob’s Building Company</h4>

   Contact me, <span class=”fn”>Andrew Other</span>, on:<br />

   <span class="tel">

      <span class="type">Work</span>:

      <span class="value">01252 XXXX</span><br />

   </span>   

   <span class="tel">

      <span class="type">Cell</span>:

      <span class="value">0795 XXXXXXX</span><br /><br />

   </span>

   <div class="adr">

      Our <span class="type">work</span> address is:<br />

      <span class="street-address">147 Some Street</span><br />

      <span class=”locality”>Another Town</span><br />

      <span class=”region”>Hampshire</span><br />

      <span class=”postal-code”>GU8 8AA</span>, <span class=”country-name”>UK</span>

   </div>

</p>

While this may at first glance look strange, close inspection shows there is method to the madness. Let’s break it down:

<p class=”vcard”>: This tells Google that all information between the opening and closing <p></p> tags is part of a vCard. A vCard is a microformat standard that helps describe information about a person or business.

<h4 class=”org”>Bob’s Building Company</h4>: org tells Google that “Bob’s Building Company” is the name of the organisation that this vCard is associated with.

<span class=”fn”>Andrew Other</span>: fn tells Google that “Andrew Other” is the name of the person this vCard is associated with. (if fn and org both have the same value, Google will treat the vCard as being details for a place of business). This next one is a bit more tricky:

<span class="tel">
   <span class="type">Work</span>:
   <span class="value">01252 XXXX</span><br />
</span>

The first portion, <span class=”tel”> … </span> tells Google that everything between the <span></span> tags  is a telephone number. <span class=”type”>Work</span> then tells Google the the telephone number is a Work number, and then <span class=”value”>01252 XXXX</span>instructs Google as to what the telephone number actually is.

The next telephone number deals with a cellphone number, so you’ll see that we used the same format as the work number, but we told Google that the type is different:  <span class=”type”>Cell</span>

The last portion of our example details the work address for Andrew Other:

<div class="adr">
   Our <span class="type">work</span> address is:<br  />
   <span class="street-address">147 Some  Street</span><br />
   <span class=”locality”>Another Town</span><br  />
   <span class=”region”>Hampshire</span><br />
   <span class=”postal-code”>GU8 8AA</span>, <span  class=”country-name”>UK</span>
</div>

As you can see, the format is quite similar yet again.  <div class=”adr”> is telling Google that the information that follows details an address, <span class=”type”>work</span> says it is a work address, and then each element of the address is broken down according to “street-address”, “locality”, “region”, “postal-code” and “country-name”.

There are many different codes for the hCard format, which can be viewed on the Microformat website, along with more in-depth explanations, and examples.

Also, as mentioned earlier, Google also supports formats for reviews, events, businesses and organisations, and even recipes.

For more information on Google’s Rich Snippets, the following links should help:

Rich Snippets for Local Search
Rich Snippets Help Documentation