Rich Snippets appear differently for Wikipedia, Why?
-
Hi All,
I've been doing a bit of research for a customer and whilst I was looking through the google results pages I came across this interesting rich snippet for a Wikipedia page (see screen shot attached). Its returned some extra information i.e Owner, Water Source, Number of Stills and Capacity.
Is this just Google playing around or is this something I've missed and you can markup additional information for your rich snippet?
Thanks in advance
Jon
-
Hi Jon,
The information showing up in the rich snippet has been taken from the very well-structured table that appears on the right-hand side of many Wikipedia pages. This data is very easy for Googlebot to read (because it's in a table), and regarded as trustworthy (because it's on Wikipedia). Depending on how Google interprets your intent, it may or may not borrow from this well-structured data in the rich snippet.
For example, on the Wikipedia page for Optical Express, there is again a table that lists key data about the company: the year it was founded, who the founder was, and which products it sells, among other things. When I search for "optical express contact lenses", the Wikipedia entry doesn't have a rich snippet, even though contact lenses are listed in the product field in the table. If I search for a less commercially-minded term, like "optical express founder", I do get a rich snippet with information about the company and founder (see the two images I've attached here).
So the point really is that there are no guarantees, and no direct control over the rich snippet, but you and your clients should definitely expect to see a lot more of this kind of thing in future, whenever Google is confident that a rich snippet provides a good answer.
As for what you can do: your client won't have Wikipedia's authority, but you can use structured data, such as JSON-LD or Microformats, to make the meaning of your words more transparent to Google. This will increase the chance, at least, of meaningful rich snippets with information about your client's company or products. Tymen has linked to a couple of useful resources, which you should use to ensure that you're implementing the structured data correctly.
-
Hi Jon,
Google allows several forms of structured Data which you can find on https://developers.google.com/structured-data/rich-snippets/. I just have the Reviews in place and this works very well for me. There's a handy tool to see if you meet Googles regulations on https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/
With Wikipedia's example I indeed think google is playing around. If your client is ont the Whiskey business aswell I would suggest you enrich the Wikipedia page for them :).
Good luck!
Tymen
-
What I believe you're seeing is information taken from the knowledge graph. Wikipedia is a data source of the knowledge graph (there are a lot of sources), so it's logical that Google would include that information in their results.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should an international school have subdomains for each school in a different country?
I understand a lot of people in the SEO world think that everything should be under one site, but if a European school wants to expand its presence in the USA, the current domain authority is 30/100 for the European website. The school is thinking of opening another school in the USA, should they just create a subdomain on the same European site or have a new site for the USA because it's better for the branding?
On-Page Optimization | | marketingextra
Any SEO experts can chime in here?1 -
What's the best SEO tactics when you have a dedicated web address pointing to a page on a different site?
Hope someone can help with a question I've got about sorting out some duplicate content issues. To simplify the question, imagine there is a website a.com which has a page a.com/newslettersignup. In addition to the a.com domain, there is also a different web address, ashortcut.com, which points to a.com/newslettersignup. ashortcut.com is the web address that is advertised in marketing material etc. So what is the best way then to tell Google etc. that ashortcut.com is the preferred URL for the page which sits at a.com/newslettersignup? The advice I've read about the canonical tag, for example, doesn't cover this exact scenario so although it can support cross-domain information, I'm not sure if that's the best route to follow. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Nobody15755058948220 -
Does using keywords in the top level domain make any difference to SEO rankingsq
i am setting up a new company and I need to register a domain name, is there any advantage to using the full name of the company in the domain name? I know it used to be important but does it still make a difference? If possible I would like to just use say the first letter of each of the 3 words instead what will amount to 23 letters but of it makes a difference then 23 letters it will have to be. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Ast98581 -
Best practices when targeting a different country and language completely.
Hi, I have just recently built a shopping site which is targeting users from the UK, built in opencart. Now I want to expand the site and also target customers in Thailand, for Thailand users they will need the site in Thai & English language. I was wondering what would be the best option to do this, taking into account best possible practice V's time involved. As I can see it have only a couple of options really. 1. Add a new language to the existing .com site. This seems to be the easiest and fastest option. 2. Clone the site and launch on a .co.th domain with Thai/Eng text option. Would their be any major benefit ranking wise as to having a co.th separate site. Or any duplicate content potential issues. Bit of a noob so don't be afraid to point out the obvious. I did have search and could only find topics relating to eu languages and GB v US. Is their anything extra that has to be taken into account considering the massive differences between UK and Thai. Thanks you for any guidance, Ian
On-Page Optimization | | cookie7770 -
Question about the variations of keyphrases on different pages
Hi, I am a big fan of seomoz and read a lot of articles! I have a new site for services in London. I have 5 main keyphrases on 5 different pages. Would it be better to make new pages with variations of those 5 keyphrases? As an example: one of the main keyphrases is "Service London" and I want to create new pages -- "Services West Ruislip", "Services Poplar", "Services Brixton" and etc. Should it be better to do it as described or to keep the 5 main keywords and focus on them? Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | yanko840 -
How to do SEO for different countries- .au, .uk, .in
Hi I have a website which we targetted in australia and ranked it on top. Now we are launching another version of website in UK so we uploaded same site with same content in same language to .uk domain. 1- Will google consider it as a duplicate content as sites are same only domain is different 2- How to do onpage for such site? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | expertvillagemedia0 -
Small Title Differences cause duplicate errors
My site titles have 3 features in them. Just 1 varies and I am getting duplicate title errors. I'm thinking of moving the different feature from the 2nd position to the start of the title. Doese anyone think this would help? Any other suggestions for a simple fix? Thank You Handcrafter The titles look like this: Green Measuring Cups|Pewter Post|By JohnMiller Green Measuring Cups|Cherry Post|By JohnMiller Green Measuring Cups|Pewter Strip|By JohnMiller
On-Page Optimization | | stephenfishman0 -
Optimally, how many times should the key word or phrase you are targeting for a particular page be mentioned or appear on that page?
Our marketing team is debating how many times the key phrase on each of our web store's product pages should include the word/phrase we are trying to be competitive with. Can you advise?
On-Page Optimization | | Glynlyon0