What are rich results? Rich results are special featured snippets that appear in Google Search, Google Images, and Google Maps, as well as on the mobile Google app home screen. They may also be accessed through voice search by saying OK, Google. A variety of user signals go into determining which results are rich results. We don’t share the details of those signals publicly to avoid encouraging search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that seek to manipulate those signals. Since we launched rich results earlier this year, we being an results-driven SEO agency Gold Coast have seen some sites make changes to their content and mark-up in an attempt to improve their ranking in these results.
What are rich results, and why do they matter?
Google introduced rich results (which are now called enhanced or featured snippets) in May 2011, but they’ve become even more prominent with their recent mobile search results updates. If you’ve seen an answer box at or near #1 on Google’s mobile search results, it’s a rich result. You can see one of these answers below: If you’re trying to figure out how your page might fare against other pages, you can use Google’s new feature eligibility tool.
How to check if my page is eligible
Head over to Google Webmaster Tools and, in your main dashboard, select Search Appearance and then Rich Results. Next, click on Add/Test Structured Data (underneath your list of properties) and paste in a URL. If you see a green check mark next to your URL (in the image below), you’re good to go! If not, you’ll need to make some changes before it shows up. What do rich results look like? These are results that appear in special boxes that provide more information about businesses or people than what would normally be provided by organic search results.
For example, they have an image field that includes their logo as well as a name field that has their business name inside of it. All of these pieces together mean they’re eligible for rich results, and now we can quickly pull up more information about them right from our search engine result page.
What to do if you’re not sure how long it will take
If you’re not sure how long it will take you to do something, estimating a range and having an idea of what might happen if things go wrong will give you some wiggle room. It could end up saving your reputation with others or even save your own sanity by giving you a more positive outlook on how things will go. If everything goes right, great—you’re right! But if there are challenges along the way, at least you’ll have an idea of what might happen so that you can plan for them as best as possible.
What should I expect in the future with Rich Results?
The future of results-driven SEO is still unclear. A lot will depend on how search engines decide, as per results-driven SEO agency Gold Coast to incorporate rich snippets into their ranking algorithms and whether or not they decide that it’s worth cutting out another potential source of revenue (ads). For now, don’t hesitate to add rich snippets if your content matches them. Doing so will help ensure your page is eligible for rich results and makes for a better user experience overall. You can also expect these changes and updates as Google continues iterating on their new search engine.