Rich snippets are search results that have been enhanced using structured data from your webpages. This feature has been launched for shopping sites, and the new format shows price, availability, and product reviews on pages offering a product for sale. Right now, shopping rich snippets appear on search results pages supported on a global scale.

1. Secrets of Rich Snippets for SEO
Rich snippets make easier search
engine to read your web page
by Sameera Thilakasiri | www.sameerast.com | Twitter @ sameerast 1

2. Introduction
Rich snippets are search results that have been enhanced using structured
data from your webpages. This feature has been launched for shopping sites,
and the new format shows price, availability, and product reviews on pages
offering a product for sale. Right now, shopping rich snippets appear on
search results pages supported on a global scale.
Rich snippets help you to:
• Attract potential buyers while they are searching for items to buy on
Google.
• Submit your product listings for free.
• Control your product information. You can maintain the accuracy and
freshness of your
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3. This article provides examples
The following HTML code describes an ACME-brand anvil, attractively priced
at $119.99 and sold by the online retailer Executive Objects.
ACME Executive Anvil
<img src="anvil_executive.jpg"/>
Sleeker than ACME's Classic Anvil, the Executive Anvil is perfect for the
business traveler looking for something to drop from a height.
Category: Anvils
Product #: 925872
Average rating: 4.4, based on 89 reviews
Regular price: $179.99
Sale: $119.99 (Sale ends 5 November!)
Available from: Executive Objects
Condition: Previously owned, in excellent condition In stock! Order now!
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4. How it works
Here is the same content, marked up with Product and Offer properties. The
example consists of a Product (the ACME Executive Anvil) with a nested Offer.
If you prefer, you could instead create an Offer with a nested Product.
<div itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Product">
<span itemprop="brand">ACME</span> <span itemprop="name">Executive Anvil</span>
<img itemprop="image" src="anvil_executive.jpg" />
<span itemprop="description">Sleeker than ACME's Classic Anvil, the Executive Anvil is perfect for the business
traveler looking for something to drop from a height. </span>
Category: <span itemprop="category" content="Hardware > Tools > Anvils">Anvils</span>
Product #: <span itemprop="identifier" content="mpn:925872"> 925872</span>
<span itemprop="review" itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Review-aggregate">
<span itemprop="rating">4.4</span> stars, based on <span itemprop="count">89 </span> reviews
</span>
<span itemprop="offerDetails" itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Offer">
Regular price: $179.99 <meta itemprop="currency" content="USD" />
$<span itemprop="price">119.99</span> (Sale ends <time itemprop="priceValidUntil" datetime="2020-11-05"> 5
November!</time>)
Available from: <span itemprop="seller">Executive Objects</span>
Condition: <span itemprop="condition" content="used">Previously owned, in excellent condition</span>
<span itemprop="availability" content="in_stock">In stock! Order now!</span>
</span>
</div>
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5. Here's how this example works.
• On the first line, <itemscope itemtype="http://data-
vocabulary.org/Product">indicates that the HTML enclosed in
the <div> represents a Product. itemscope indicates that the content of
the <div> describes an item, and itemtype="http://data-
vocabulary.org/Product" indicates that the item is a Product.
• The sample describes properties of the Product, such as its name, brand,
and price. To label product properties, each element containing one of these
properties (such as <div> or <span>) is assigned anitemprop attribute
indicating a property. For example, <span itemprop="brand">.
• The sample also includes a nested Review-aggregate itemprop="review"
itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Review-
aggregate") and a nested Offer (itemprop="offerDetails"
itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Offer"),
which describes specific information including the price, condition, and
availability.
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6. Product identifiers
Specify both type (for example, SKU or MPN) and value in
the content attribute, separated by a colon, like this:
<span itemprop="identifier" content="mpn:12345-6789">
The manufacturer's part number is 12345-6789</span>
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7. Non-visible text
In general, Google will use only marked-up data that is visible to the user.
Hidden data will be ignored. However, in a few circumstances, it can be useful
to provide both a machine-readable and a human-readable version of your
content. For example, while the text string "Elvis's birthday" is significant to a
great many human readers, it's not as meaningful to search engines as 1935-
01-08. Similarly, human readers can infer the meaning of the $ symbol, but it
can be useful to specifically tell search engines whether your prices are in
pesos or dollars.
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8. Google recognizes
Google recognizes specific machine-readable values for the following Product
tags:
• category
• priceValidUntil
• currency
• price
• identifier
• condition
The following example describes the condition of an item, providing Google
with the machine-readable valueused while displaying a text equivalent
(Previously owned but in excellent condition) to the human reader.
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9. <span itemprop="condition" content="used">Previously owned but in
excellent condition</span>
Use the meta tag to specify content that is not visible on the page in any way.
For example, to indicate to Google that your price is in USD, do this:
<meta itemprop="currency" content="USD" />
For dates and times, specify the date in ISO date format in the time element,
like this:
<time itemprop="priceValidUntil" datetime="2020-11-05">5 November
2020</time>
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10. Google rich snippets testing tool
Google also announced that Google’s Rich Snippets Testing Tool has also been
updated to support HTML input. “We heard from many users that they
wanted to be able to test their HTML source without having to publish it to a
web page,” he says.
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11. Author
Sameera Thilakasiri is a website designer based in Colombo. Specialist in
UI,UX, SEO, IA, IxD, RWD. He is blogging technical areas while is leisure. He
canbe reached by http://www.sameerast.com
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