What are Rich Results?

Rich snippets – also known as rich results – are search results pulled from schema markup code on your website that provide extra information to your listing when your website appears on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). They are not a Google ranking factor, but can give audiences more information about your services, helping to drive more traffic to your site.

How do rich snippets, rich results, and SERP features differ?

Rich snippets, rich results, and SERPs have similar features but are not exactly the same, which can lead to confusion. Lets look at the differences: 

• Rich snippets –Google’s official statement is that ‘rich snippets’ are now known as ‘rich results’. 
• Rich results – According to Google, rich results include text-and-image carousels, images, and other non-textual elements.
• SERP features – Provide related information on the user’s search query, such as the reviews, videos, and the knowledge panel.

Types of rich snippets

Google supports different types of rich content within its search results. Here are some of the more common ones:

Review

One of the most common rich snippets, the ‘Review’ snippet adds a yellow star review rating to the search results, with additional information about the reviews. Review snippets can appear for the book, course, event, local business, movie, product, recipe, and software app content types.

Product

Useful if you have an e-commerce website, product snippets provide more information to potential buyers about your products, such as stock level, shipping info, and.

Recipe

Recipe rich snippets show information about the recipe on the page, including ingredients, preparation time, and reviews.

Event

Event snippets are useful if you have ticketed events such as concerts or shows.

A note about FAQ and HowTo snippets

Google announced removal of these snippets in September 2023 to provide a cleaner and more consistent search experience for users.

How to get rich snippets for your web pages

For your website to be eligible for rich snippets, you’ll need to add some code called ‘schema markup’ to your web pages that follows Google’s structured data guidelines.

Some website content management systems either already have it installed, or have plugins or modules available that can add the code for you easily.  You can double-check this by running a page through the Google Rich Results Test tool. If no markup is present on the page, the rich results test will display the message ‘No items detected’ and you’ll need to add the code with a plugin module or manually. We’d suggest that if you’re unsure, you get a professional company such as Gleneden Ridge Design to add the code for you.

Here’s how to add the code.

1. Create the code: As noted above, if you use a popular content management system (CMS) like WordPress, adding schema to your website is as easy as installing a schema plugin such as the ‘All-In-One SEO’ plugin, with which you can deploy the schema very easily without having to write any code yourself. 
   • If you don’t use one of these CMS systems, you may have to create the code yourself, or talk to a developer to help create and add the code.
   • You can use an online service such as the Merkle Schema Markup Generator to create Product schema markup code, and Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper is good too. To generate the code, simply fill out the prompts from the tool.
   • When the code’s been created, copy the JSON-LD code; this is the code format Google recommends for schema markup. Remember to only add code for content that’s visible to users and adheres to Google’s guidelines.
2. Check and validate the markup: When you have the code, you need to check that it’s valid; if not, your page won’t be eligible for rich results. 
   • If the code has been generated with a plugin or within a CMS, you can check it by:
     • Opening the SEO tool or section on the page that needs checking.
     • Next, go to the Structured data tab.
     • Then click on Validate, and on the Rich Results Test.
     • Clicking this will take you to Google’s Rich Results Test. If it’s valid, you’ll see a green tick. Once you’ve confirmed it’s present and valid, go on to the next section below. 
   • If you’ve manually added your schema code, you’ll need two checks:
     • Check the code is valid before adding it to your website
     • Check the code is valid after it’s added
     • To see if your code snippet is valid, select ‘Code’ on the Rich Results Test and paste your code snippet in. If it’s valid, you’ll see a green tick appear under the subheadings ‘Detected items.’
3. Add the code to your website: Once you’ve validated your code, you can add it to the <head> or <body> of your website. Once the code is added, you can run the page URL through the Rich Results Test to double-check it’s valid on-site. This time, select “URL,” and enter a URL you want to test. If it’s valid, you’ll see a green tick.
4. Monitor marked-up pages for performance: monitoring your marked-up pages is important for several reasons: Websites break easily (even if your code is valid, it can break later on), and code may become invalid (old schema markup may become invalid over time and need updating). You can check and monitor your pages with Google Search Console (GSC), and with the Google Rich Results Test tool.

Conclusion

Rich snippets can get more clicks than the standard links that appear in the SERPs, but it largely depends on the content or your website as to whether it’s actually worth putting in the time and effort to implement it. You don’t need to be good at code to get rich snippets for your website. It does take some work to get going, and even once everything is set up, there’s no guarantee that your snippets will appear, so it needs to be judged on a site-by-site basis. If you have an online store, run events, or publish recipes, you’re more likely to have success with structured data like rich snippets than if you have a website that simply displays your services.