Introduction to the new rich card features in Google Webmaster

Google first introduced rich cards in the US in 2016, which created a new way for site owners to present previews of their content on the search results page. On 17th May 2017, Google announced the new rich card feature, available for use to site owners all over the world.

As explained by Google, “Rich cards are a new Search result format building on the success of rich snippets. Just like rich snippets, rich cards use schema.org structured markup to display content in an even more engaging and visual format, with a focus on providing a better mobile user experience.”

By introducing rich cards, google has made structured data of websites more important than ever! By using rich cards, your website has the opportunity to grab more click throughs, especially by mobile users. In short, rich cards allow you to make your website appear more prominent and visually appealing.

Let us walk you through the new rich card features available on Google Webmaster:

1. Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs increase the findability of higher level pages of a website and reduces the actions needed to be taken by a user to reach a higher level page. A breadcrumb trail is a navigation scheme that indicates the position of the webpage in a website’s hierarchy and offers a way to trace the path back to its original landing point.

2. Corporate Contact Information
Corporate contact information allows you to add your company’s contact information to the google knowledge panel. This way whenever a user keys in your company’s name, your contact information will appear first.

3. Logos
You can specify the image/logo that you want Google to display when a user searches your company. Markup like this is a strong signal to Google Search algorithms to show this image in Knowledge Graph displays.

4. Sitelinks Searchbox
A search box can appear under your website’s name in the google search results. This search box can be used by a user to search a link or product inside your website. This way the user can directly land on the page they’re looking for instead of following the long process of entering the website and then entering the page they’re looking for.

5. Social Profile Links
Google can display your social profile information in the google knowledge panel in the search results when a user searches your company.

6. Events
Event searchers can easily find your events in the google search results when you markup your organized events in google. You can markup all types of events, jazz concerts, stand up comedies, art exhibition etc.

7. Local Businesses
When users search businesses in google, for example, restaurants or best IT Company, then google can display a graph card with details of businesses that matched the query.

8. Products
Google can display features of your products like availability, price, and reviews in the rich search results when you add markups to your product pages. By providing detailed info about your products in rich results, you can attract potential customers. Using this markup, you can make your products available to the users who are looking for the products you sell.

9. Review
This markup displays two kinds of reviews – critic reviews and review snippets on a wide range of schema.org types, including books, movies, businesses or products. Users can easily find and navigate to your website to read the full reviews. Review snippets show valid reviews or ratings markup which included starts or other review summary info from reviews or ratings.

10. Videos
You can markup your video content with structured data to enable users to easily find and watch them. Video details may include- duration, description or upload date.

Reference : https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/search-gallery