Haven’t heard of structured data? Well, basically structured data allows Google searchers to see the value of a website before they visit the actual site.
Want to take bookings directly from the Google search engine results page? Structured data. Want to display your 5-star reviews to your Google visitors? Structured data.
Forms of Structured data …
Structured data comes in many different forms. Besides the ‘plain blue ink’ general search term you find in a regular Google search of Title, URL and description.
Enhancements
You can enhance your rich or plain results with different types of enhancements. Including but not limited to sitelinks, search boxes, breadcrumbs, corporate logos, and more.
Below is an example of an enhancement whereby Google shows a corporate page as a structured data enhancement.
Rich Results …
A rich result is one that contains thumbnail images, review stars, graphical elements or some kind of visual enhancement.
Also in structured data rich results, you can show a critic review … A snippet from a review that an editor has curated, created or compiled for a publisher.
To see a full list of rich results types, click here.
Knowledge Panel …
The Google knowledge panel is a collection of information from one or more than one pages, displayed in a rich result with text, links and images.
Featured Snippet …
Have you ever searched Google, only to see a snippet of a specific search result site on the results page? That’s a featured snippet.
For more information on featured snippets click here.
Business Information:
Google provides a variety of ways to display your business information on the search engine results page.
So what structured data should my site be using ?
| Your content type is… | Recommended features and enhancements |
|---|---|
| Articles/blogs | Article, AMP, Fact check, How-to, Speakable, Subscription and paywalled content |
| Books | Book, Review |
| Education | Course, Carousel, Dataset |
| Entertainment/media/news | Carousel, Event, Fact check, Livestream, movie, Review, Subscription and paywalled content, Video (and Video Livestream), Podcast, (see also Video best practices) |
| Business | Business or corporate identity information, Local business (for a business with a physical store), Top places list |
| Events | Event, Video and Video Livestream |
| Recipes | Recipe, Carousel, AMP, Review |
| Products | Product type, Review, Software app, FAQ |
| Scientific or research organization | Dataset |
| Job-related content | Job posting, Occupation, Employer aggregate rating |
| Any type | BreadcrumbsSitelinks search box (for larger sites)[Experimental] Actions: Integrate with Google Assistant, a spoken interface that enables users to interact with your content using voice commands.See Image best practices for including imagesSee AMP and Mobile-friendly best practices to learn about practices and features to make your site mobile-friendly.Q&A tags let you indicate questions and answers on your page.Provide search-friendly limited free access to your site by using the Subscription and paywalled content tags. |
Conclusion …
It’s important to note that providing structured data to a page for Google doesn’t guarantee that the page will be shown with the data. It’s up to Google to make that decision based on what’s most relevant to its search users.