Google announced in May 2009 that it would parse microformats like hCard, hReview, and hProduct from webpages and display structured information from those pages in search results. This included information about people, reviews, products, businesses, and more. Over time, Google expanded support for additional metadata standards and formats. In 2011, Google, Bing, and Yahoo introduced Schema.org as a shared vocabulary for annotating pages with microdata, covering many domains. While Schema.org and microdata are useful for businesses, their long term success is still unclear as other formats like RDFa remain viable options.

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Google Rich Snippets

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Overview
• May 2009, Google announced that they would be parsing the hCard,
hReview, and hProduct microformats and using them to populate
search result pages
• These Rich Snippets give users convenient summary information about
their search results at a glance
– Structured data from pages showed in Google's search results
– Enabled by embedding microformats and RDFa
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Development
• October 2009
– Release of Rich Snippet testing tool
– Extension of RDFa support with some fields from FOAF and vCard
– Mark-up of Video Content
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Development
• Support of multiple information types
– Reviews
– People profiles
– Products
– Business listings
– Recipes
– Events
• Mark up
– Microdata
– Microformats
– RDFa
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Schema.org
• June 2011, Introduction of schema.org (Google, Bing, Yahoo) as
preferred way of annotation
– Using microdata (is a balance between the extensibility of RDFa and the simplicity of
microformats) markup format and a vocabulary that is shared by all search engines
– Covers broad range of domains
– Old (RDFa, Microformats) markups still work
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GoodRelations and schema.org
• GoodRelations
– Powerful Web vocabulary specifically designed for e-commerce scenarios, covering
business, store, product, offer, warranty, payment, delivery, and other information
• For e-commerce scenarios, both schema.org and GoodRelations can
be used
• Combination of both maximize impact for the visibility in search engines
– Use GoodRelations to extend schema.org markup in Microdata syntax
– Use schema.org types to extend GoodRelations
markup in RDFa syntax
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Conclusions
• Why annotate your website?
– SEO
– Visibility
– Data integration possibilities for the future
– Make a website understandable for humans as well as computers
• Microdata annotation using schema.org vocabulary very interesting
especially for businesses
• Not all fields form schema.org influence the search results
• Not clear yet if schema.org will be successful
• Criticism around the fact that microdata is the only supported format
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