Rich Snippets: The Now-You-See-Them-Now-You-Don’t Phenomenon
At recent search engine
marketing conferences in Chicago and New York (#SESCHI #SMXEast),
Google’s Hummingbird announcement was the hot topic, generating endless
buzz from industry experts and creating equal unease in the SEO
community.
Hummingbird is basically
a flashing neon sign announcing that Google has shifted its primary search
algorithm from keyword matching to semantic search – that semantic SEO isn’t a
trend; it’s the new norm. The announcement triggered an intense new
focus on how to get semantic markup done STAT . . . and then how to earn
the Rich Snippet enhanced listings on Google.
At some point, almost
every conversation swirled around Schema.org markup and Rich Snippets, and many
of them included a version of this crazy-making anecdote: “I implemented
Schema.org markup about a month ago, and my search listings began to get Rich
Snippets. But yesterday, all my Rich Snippets disappeared. What’s up with
that?” To explain this unnerving phenomenon, we need to backtrack a bit.
What Are Rich Snippets?
Rich Snippets is a term
used by the search engines for the enhanced listings on search engine result
pages (SERPs). For e-commerce products, Rich Snippets typically include
elements such as star ratings, number of reviews, product price and
availability (in stock or not). For content articles, they include attributes
like author, title, image, ratings, and publication date.
Rich Snippets make a
listing stand out from the crowd and trigger higher click-through rates. The
details in Rich Snippets (ratings, reviews, images, etc.) make it much clearer
exactly what’s on the site. So when you click, you know there’s a greater likelihood
of finding exactly what you want, which leads to higher conversion rates.
More traffic, better
qualified users, increased conversion rates . . . no wonder websites are
chasing Rich Snippets. And no wonder they’re thrilled when they get them, and
freaked if they disappear. To earn Rich Snippets from search engines, your
products/articles should contain Schema.org markup and the semantic markup
“vocabulary” adopted as a standard by Google, Bing, Yahoo! and others and now
considered the global standard by the W3C (the World Wide Web consortium).
Once you implement
Schema.org markup on your site, Google analyzes the markup on a continual basis
and, eventually, may award you a Rich Snippet like the ones highlighted
in the comparison below of three product listings. One has a full Rich
Snippet, one has a partial Rich Snippet, and the third was not awarded a Rich
Snippet in this particular SERP … even though all three have been awarded full
Rich Snippets in other search results.
Proper
Schema.org markup helps search engine crawlers find your products and web pages
more easily. But that’s not all. They also increase Google’s “trust” in your
site, because the markup helps Google verify what is actually on your
pages/site. When Google “trusts” a website, it’s likely to rank it higher than
sites it has reservations about. Even without a Rich Snippet being awarded, the
Schema.org markup is important so the web page is included as a relevant result
to a search query in the new semantic search algorithms of Hummingbird.
In other words, although Google ranks sites and pages based on a
number of factors, trust is a big deal.
In
short, Rich Snippets are excellent for users, sites, and search engines. So
it’s no surprise that on SERPs, listings with Rich Snippets trend toward the
top.
A Privilege, Not a Right
Rich
Snippets are awarded only after a site’s Schema.org markup has been thoroughly
analyzed by Google. This can sometimes take five or six weeks. However, many
sites have been awarded Rich Snippets in as little as eight days. But here’s
the “but”: Google is The Decider. It can give and take away Rich Snippets for
its own hidden reasons, at its own discretion, and it does.
This
mysterious, seemingly arbitrary give-and-take power is what sent stress levels
soaring in the SEO crowd at SES Chicago and SMX East. Many people saw their
sites’ Rich Snippets suddenly vanish and were afraid their rankings would, too.
As a result, they’d spent hours trying to modify their code to prevent losing
their Rich Snippets for good – even though they didn’t know why they’d lost
them in the first place. But that’s probably not the right course of action!
Here’s
a fresh perspective. In the process of implementing Schema.org markup on
multiple client sites, I’ve seen a pattern emerge:
- About 10 to 14 days after the Schema.org markup is done, Google will crawl a site and analyze the markup.
- If all’s well, Google will then award Rich Snippets to some of the site’s pages.
- In roughly 5 days, those Rich Snippets disappear, only to come back several days later.
- This cycle may be repeated several times, on the same pages or on a new set of pages.
- After about 8 weeks, if the repeated analytics don’t turn up any problems, Google will likely start awarding permanent Rich Snippets throughout the site’s products and articles when it matches all the algorithm criteria for any given search query.
Google
seems to be using this now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t cycle of Rich Snippets to
do three things: perform analytics across their new Hummingbird algorithm,
understand the effects Rich Snippets have on a site’s search-results
performance (inclusion, ranking, clicks), and track whether those results match
Google’s algorithm expectations. It’s not so arbitrary after all.
The
entire process of being awarded a Rich Snippet by Google can be exciting,
frustrating, and time-consuming. But Hummingbird’s arrival has made it clear
that Schema.org markup is a) no longer optional, and b) have to be done right
to earn Rich Snippets. Manual coding is tedious, costly, and error-prone. DIY
tools often work fine, though they have a learning curve. Automated
implementations are fast, easy, and often the cheapest.
Rich Snippets: Getting and Keeping Them
Google
claims that adding Schema.org markup won’t affect your rankings in search
results but you should focus on having high-quality content that users want and
share. Ignore the first and take the second to heart. While high-quality
content is always vital, having Rich Snippets before most others do gives you
an edge – it increases click-throughs and sharing, a combo that usually yields
higher rankings.
Meanwhile,
don’t be discouraged if your Rich Snippets do a disappearing act. Google is
constantly testing and modifying its algorithms. Here’s the best way to react:
- Leave your markup code as is for at least 8 weeks and just monitor the ups and downs of your Rich Snippets. They mean Google is continually analyzing your site.
- As long as your Rich Snippets don’t disappear for more than two weeks in a row, there likely isn’t a problem with your markup.
- If you panic and mess with your markup during this phase, you risk sending Google mixed signals about the authenticity of your web pages.
- If you’re genuinely worried about the correctness of your markup implementation, have someone in the know audit your site for errors before you make any changes.
- If after 8 weeks or so, you don’t have any Rich Snippets, or if you had some early on but they’ve been gone for weeks, something’s not right.
- If you never received any Rich Snippets, there could be errors in your Schema.org implementation.
- If you got some Rich Snippets initially but they disappeared permanently – without your making any modifications to your Schema.org markup – there are a couple of possibilities: If the markup was manual, not automated, there could be what are called coupling code errors; you’ll need a Schema.org pro to sort this out. Alternatively, Google may have tagged your site for suspected nefarious black-hat SEO practices, and the punishment is holding back on Rich Snippets.
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