Google Launches Structured Data Testing Tool
Google has unveiled updates to their rich snippet testing tool, which now goes by the name: the structured data testing tool. Viewing of the snippets for webmasters in the development stage now mirrors the way in which they appear in search results, and therefore will be encountered by searchers. A new visual style has been adopted, which Google has said will make the analysis of structured data much clearer, and easier to extract from the page. It's also available in more languages for multi-lingual webmasters, as it was previously only in English. As the name suggests, Rich snippets are additional information snippets in addition to website headlines, URLs, and descriptions. The nature of snippets depends on the type of content in the website, and the search query of the surfer. In the above example, a search for an author has yielded this result, with added photograph, and the ability to click and find more articles/publications by the same author. For a website containing recipes, you'll be able to see an image and recipe example. For sites containing music, you will be able to see a short snippet of a track list and be able to play from Google. Snippets help people get more information for their search, without having to click-through to sites. Now with structured data testing tool, SEO experts will be able to get more from their snippets on the search engine!