Should I put on a black hat and abuse Rich Snippet ?

[DavidLenehan]

What do people think about abusing rich snippets?

I have a competitor who has started using the author tag on product pages. I guess this will be giving them an unfair advantage in the SERP.   I had considered doing the same but was a bit worried about getting banned in the future.

Should we go down the same path and is it likely that Google will eventually hit us with a ban?

[DavidLenehan]

Good work Cyto.

[sbaylor]

Cyto, I don't get any of the structured data in Bing/Yahoo. At least in Google, I get the star ratings.

Just as an FYI, I also don't see the image in the Rich Snippets Structured Data Testing Tool, although I've been over and over the specs for the images, and the code (at least to my knowledge) is correct. This, along with other posts that I've read elsewhere, tells me that Google simply hasn't implemented the image aspect of the code yet.

[Bio-RadAbs]

Okay some findings.

Been reading this blog entry by cpcstrategy.com and they have a great example

Take the keyphrase "Nike Men's Air Rival golf shoes overstock", now search on Google, Bing and Yahoo

• Google
• Bing
• Yahoo

As you can see, Yahoo displays a product image. It seems each search engine has it's own way of displaying content.

Gentlemen, my suggestion is to tag it with the product image and corresponding URL. If Google so wishes to change it's algorithm to display the image more prominently, then it would kick in and work.

I wouldn't omit it or use recipe's as a product page tag. If Google goes more aggressive with schema, you'll just have another work on your plate to figure out which pages had the recipe image.

[Bio-RadAbs]

Darin, how does your link look in Yahoo or Bing. Do they display the image?

[Bio-RadAbs]

I think you guys have stumbled onto something.  Here's a link someone advertised as showing product images in search, but reviewing the link again gives nothing.

Did google remove the functionality for products and kept it for authors, recipes? Maybe to not dilute Google Merchant Center?

I can't find a working example to analyse in 'Structured Data Testing Tool'

[DavidLenehan]

I had considered using the recipe image snippet for this instead of the author tag.

[sbaylor]

I haven't seen images for product snippets working yet. I have had that part of the Rich Snippets product code in place for a few months and other aspects of the snippet are showing in Google, but not the images yet (at least not for me or any of my competitors as far as I can tell).

[Bio-RadAbs]

Exactly.

You can view the schema codes here, here's the product page one with examples. You can see image highlighted

http://schema.org/Product

Hope that helps.

[DavidLenehan]

Cheers Cyto.  It is short term reward vs long term pain.

btw: What is the snippet for showing the product image in the SERP?

[Bio-RadAbs]

There is no doubt in my mind, search engines will get smarter and punish those who abuse the system.

It's been the norm since the beginning, from keyword stuffing to exact match-domains. Eventually search engines will catch up and punish. When this happens, you'll be in the deep hole trying to recover rather than strengthen.

My advice would be to go down the correct route for tagging product pages. I don't think an author tag is right for a product page, but introduce breadcrumbs, prices, ratings and product images. Last thing you want are users clicking on your page and leaving.

If I wanted to buy a laptop and saw the face of an author who wrote that page, that's a WTF moment for me. Instead, show me a screenshot of a laptop, the price range, number of reviews and the breadcrumb structure...yeah, I'm clicking that.

What i'm trying to say is that, rather than focusing on the competitor and mimicking, focus on your customer and what best would turn them from newbie to a returnee.