Microdata: The latest support for Rich Snippets

HTML is considered to be the core language of the world Wide Web with HTML5 been introduced as its latest revision. HTML5 accompanies a new markup standard called microdata that helps in the specification of well structured information in the web pages.

Google has extended its support towards microdata to be used effectively in rich snippets. The microdata would be used in addition to the already existing support for RDFa and Microformats. This new markup is very beneficial for the users and allows them to include the information related to people profiles, reviews or events in their web pages. This also enables Google to enhance the appearance of the user's web pages in the search results.

For example, below is given a HTML block that shows a selected part of a review of “L’Amourita Pizza”:

The same HTML section has been revised here with the inclusion of microdata that allows the user to specify certain important information related to the web page such as:

Restaurant being reviewed

Author

Date of the review and;

Rating

Among the many distinctive features of microdata introduced in HTML5, its quality to balance the richness with ease is the most important one. As we can see, only few HTML attributes have made the process of adding markup to the web pages so simpler. Here is the short description of all the HTML attributes used:

Itemtype – Used to mention the type of item that is being described

Itemprop – Provides information about the property of the concerned item.

The added description could also be tested by the rich snippets testing tool to ensure that Google is able to parse the data on the web page.