Who is Rich Snippet and should you get to know him?

[Note: Non-geeks may want to skip this paragraph and proceed to the next, where English language resumes.] There are three basic formats used when implementing rich snippets; microdata, microformats and RDFa. Microformat uses the <span> tag along with descriptive “class” attributes. To avoid conflicts, be sure you’re not using these classes in your CSS. Microdata code is basically regular HTML code that uses the <span> and <div> tags along with simple attributes like “itemprop” and “content”. RDFa looks more like a different programming language (a little like XML), but is also easy to understand, once you see it in action and look at the available vocabulary.

Below we can see rich snippets at work on Google’s SERP for “burlington vt maderas” (a Mexican restaurant across the street from us) on the Yelp and Urban Spoon listings.

I took a look at the source code on Yelp and found the following snippet that’s responsible for the 4 out of 5 star rating. [Second geek alert. Skip to familiar Google search result display.]

The number of stars and the number of reviews:

<div id=”bizRating”>
<div class=”rating”>
<span class=”star-img stars_4″><img class=”rating average” width=”83″ height=”325″ title=”4.0 star rating” alt=”4.0 star rating” src=”http://media1.px.yelpcdn.com/static/201012161267404880/i/ico/stars/stars_map.png”></span>
</div>
<span class=”review-count”<>span class=”count”<12>/span< reviews>/span<>a href=”#” id=”rating_graph”<Rating Details>/a>
</div>

The price range:
<span class=”pricerange”><a id=”price_tip” title=”Price range is the approximate cost per person for a meal including one drink, tax, and tip.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;We’re going for averages here, folks.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;$ = Cheap, Under $10&lt;br&gt;$$ = Moderate, $11 – $30&lt;br&gt;$$$ = Spendy, $31 – $60&lt;br&gt;$$$$ = Splurge, Above $61″>$$</a></span>

Rich Snippet can be good to know

“That’s nice, but my website doesn’t fall into any of the mentioned business categories.” Your website might not be able to take advantage of it yet, but if you provide a service or a product you will most likely be able to take advantage of this in the near future.

If your website is more information oriented, you may be better off creating a glossary of industry terms — in which case you don’t need to meet Rich Snippet. If you Google “define:Dividend Reinvestment” you will see a very limited list of websites that provide a definition, including our client, Clute Wealth Management. Definition searches are not as common as regular keyword searches, but they are still used and it is relatively easy to take advantage of them.

So, dear readers, how many of you know and like Rich Snippet? And how many could care less about Rich Snippet and his ilk?