From the presentation archives at SEOgadget - Richard's SAScon 2011 presentation - "Data Feeds & Microformats"

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MICROFORMATS
SAScon – Manchester - 2011
Richard Baxter – SEOgadget.co.uk
What are Microformats, how do they work and what can you do with them?

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YOU’LL RECOGNISE THIS
Businesses and organisations can easily markup their addresses with hCard – there are really only a few
key properties in hcard required to do this – here’s the documentation from Google

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AND THIS…
“Wow – I’m so delighted with my new Dualit toaster – arrived
really quickly, too – thanks”
Rated: 5/5
Reviews are among the most popular types of data and they’re growing

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AND, THIS?
Matt Cutts
Principal Engineer
Google Inc
+1 650-253-0000
matt.cutts@google.com
You can mark up information in a webpage about a person using hcard, too. The additional attributes
defined by the XFN properties (friend, contact and acquaintance) can be included, too.

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AND THIS?
Om nom nom

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THE PROBLEM WITH INFORMATION
Venue
Country
Name
Post Code
Even the most advanced information retrieval techniques can do with a hand recognising data

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MICROFORMATS
Microformats, RDFa and Microdata all attempt to achieve the same goal – adding structure to data found
on the web

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REVIEWS
Oh? Implement hreview – just don’t expect anything to happen with your retail site for now. Use the
reviews attributes in your Google product feed

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AT LEAST WE HAVE CAKE
*May not be “Best Ever” banana cake – my girlfriend’s banana cake is the best, and she says it’s all about
Nigella Lawson

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<div class="hrecipe">
<h2 class="fn">Recipe: <a class="url"
href="http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/banana-cake-3734">Banana
Cake</a></h2>
<p class="summary"><strong>Summary</strong>: <This cake recipe is from the
1940s that was put together by the Women's Auxiliary in Alice
Springs…</em></p>
<div class="ingredients">
<h3>Ingredients</h3>
<ul class="ingredients">
<li class="ingredient">1 cup sugar </li>
<li class="ingredient">1&1/2 cups self raising flour</li>
<li class="ingredient">1/2 cup butter </li>
<li class="ingredient">2 eggs</li>
<li class="ingredient">2 eggs</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="instructions">
<h4>Instructions</h4>
<li>Use a food processor Pre heat oven to 160C / gas mark 3 Add all
ingredients and blend until well mixed Pour into lined loaf tin Bake for
1 hour Cool and enjoy If you are a nut lover, once ingredients are
blended add 60g chopped walnuts and blend in to the mixture</li>
</div>
<p class="duration"><span class="hrlabel">Cooking time (duration):
</span><span class="hritem">90</span></p>
<p class="yield"><span class="hrlabel">Number of servings (yield):
</span><span class="hritem">8</span></p>
Posting on SEOgadget: Mark-up Your Recipes Online With hRecipe

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class="ingredient"
class="cooktime"
class="nutrition“
class="calories"

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SEATWAVE GOT IT RIGHT
hcalendar
hreview-aggregate
Markup your events with hCalendar: http://bit.ly/a8JRbt
Using hReview for your review pages: http://bit.ly/cMmicZ
Combining microformats is awesome – hreview-aggregate with hcalendar for the events

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span title="2011-05-19T1500Z00" class="dtstart"
class=“url summary"
class="location vcard"
class="fn org"
class=“photo"

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MICROFORMATS ARE EVERYWHERE
- rel=“friend”
- rel=“me”
- rel=“nofollow”
Perhaps the most well known microformat of all, rel=“nofollow” was found in 2.23% of all links in
SEOmoz’s April Linkscape update of 41.3 billion URLs

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AND CAN BE USED TO GET EXTRA SPACE IN THE SERPS
For a while – this grey text was found by Patrick Altoft in a class=“fn org url” attribute

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BUT THEY CAN BE LOST

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THANK YOU
richard@seogadget.co.uk
@richardbaxter
Thanks for listening! Check out our blog at SEOgadget.co.uk for more actionable guides and
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