Rich snippets for website structure

Question

I've recently discovered rich snippets and their usage to make a search motor understand the type of content such as addresses, people,...

I have a website in which for each page I replicate the menu (A simple menu with links to all the pages ~20 of the website) Since the first element in the body is the menu, Google makes the same search preview for all the pages: the menu and not the actual content of the page.

So I would like to know if there is a way to tell the search motor the structure of the page: for instance that some elements are navigation elements, some are content, some are copyright... Describing the "human" structure of the page.

What I understood is that rich snippets are intended to describe "real life" information, and what I am searching would be something similar but to describe the structure.

I hope that make sens.

Sorry for my english.

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 05 '13 at 11:54

So I would like to know if there is a way to tell the search motor the structure of the page: for instance that some elements are navigation elements, some are content, some are copyright... Describing the "human" structure of the page.

Well, this is what HTML elements are used for. Some use the term "semantic markup/HTML" for this. Of course this has its limits, as not every kind of structure/content type can be described.

Solutions for your example:

For navigation, there is the nav element.
The main content of a page can be automatically found thanks to sections and the outline algorithm (in HTML 5.1 there is also the main element).
The copyright info should be given in the small element, probably in a footer element. If it's a link to a license, you should use the license link type.

In general, you should follow these steps (from structure to content):

use appropriate HTML elements, as detailed as possible
use defined/registered link types (for link, a and area elements)
use Microformats (class attribute values for all elements)
use defined/registered meta tags (in meta elements)
use RDFa (Lite) and/or Microdata (new attributes for all elements)

WAI-ARIA can give additional info about your structure intended for accessibility.

Thanks for your very nice and complete answer. I have read about Microformats, and I found quite bizarre and kind of confusing that it uses class attributes, which I thought were primarily intended to style elements. Do you still think it is a good practice or should I prefer other methods? — Sami, Apr 05 '13 at 22:04
@user1843507: Yeah, that's right – microformats are quick-and-dirty, a loosely defined convention. If you find some Microformats that could be used for your content, you could add the relevant `class` values quickly (→ won't hurt, may help). But I wouldn't bother paying too much attention, as this would be better invested into [RDFa or Microdata](http://stackoverflow.com/a/14501684/1591669). You could totally skip this step and don't use Microformats at all. — unor, Apr 06 '13 at 00:27

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 04 '13 at 12:25

0

This might be what you're looking for:

<meta name="description" content="A description of the page" />

This tag provides a short description of the page. In some situations this description is used as a part of the snippet shown in the search results. Google will take that string and will show it in the search results

answered Apr 04 '13 at 12:25

ianaz

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Ah yes I thought about that, nevertheless that is not exactly what I am searching for since some page are generated automatically and I cannot ask the user to put a proper description. The ideal solution would really be that in the body of each page I would be able to describe what is the purpose of the html elements. But if there is no such thing then yes I guess I would have to go with that solution. – Sami Apr 04 '13 at 12:39

Rich snippets for website structure

2 Answers2