Over time you are going to see more search engine result listings on Google Japan similar to the example below, showing rating information, number of reviews, price ranges, and a whole lot more information that Google thinks will give better search results. These are called Rich Snippets and website owners should pay attention because early evidence suggests that such listings have a higher click through rate than generic descriptions.
Rich Snippets are implemented into your page via either of two open source annotated web markup formats that Google recognizes; RDFa and microformats. For the specifics on how to implement each format it is best to consult the Google Rich Snippets documentation.
These are just some of the types of information that RDFa and microformats can organize:
E.g. information about a persons name, locality, role, even photo can all be organized. Especially useful for social networking applications like Linked In.
E.g. brand, category, and description.
E.g. address, telephone, postal code.
E.g. reviewer, review date, numerical ranking.
E.g. creative commons licensing.
No doubt many websites already contain much of this information. But the important thing about RDFa and microformats is that they standardize the way this information is represented. It is a part of what geeks like to call the movement towards the “semantic web”.
How can you test your RDfa or microformat code to see how it will display on the screen? Fortunately Google provides a handy Rich Snippets Testing Tool.
