Want to boost your rankings on Google with the help of rich results? Google’s Rich Results Test tool and others can be the key.
In this blog post, Ray Day, SEO strategist, will go over which rich snippet testing tools to use and how to test your rich results using them, potentially boosting your rankings significantly in the process.
What You’ll Learn:
- What Are Rich Results?
- Schema vs. Structured Data vs. Rich Results
- All The Types of Rich Data
- Introducing: The Rich Results Test Tool
- Google Rich Results Test Tool FAQs
What Are Rich Results?
If you’re new to SEO, you might not even know about rich results.
They’re highlights of key information found on your web page. They appear in various formats throughout the top of search results.
Why are they so valuable? Because they contain ready-to-click info that people are looking for.
For example, you can see the aggregate rating for a product or business as a rich result. That’s helpful for consumers.
Rich snippets first came about in 2009 when Google introduced them to improve the platform’s user experience (UX). The goal was to give users key information at a glance when they first perform a search.
If people see this data and find it helpful, they’ll be much more inclined to click through to learn more. While rich results began with reviews and ratings, rich results today comprise all types of information. People can see bulleted lists of basic facts, previews of page content, and more.
Lots of SEOs like to use rich snippets because they make it easy to stand apart from competitors.
My Expert Insight into Rich Results Test Tools
I can’t stress enough the value of ranking for rich results on Google. If you want to dominate competitors and attract the most users, rich snippets, carousels, and other types of rich search results will potentially do even better than top-ranking traditional organic and paid results.
Rich results are especially important with the recent release of Google’s AI Overviews, which will now appear at the top of results for more complex searches right above snippets and other rich search results. If people scroll down, they’re now much less likely to see results below for certain queries, making rich results more critical than ever.
People may perceive your rich results as more trustworthy and authoritative than other generic results, bringing more people to your site.
At the same time, you should know how to test your website’s performance with these results. That’s why we’re going to dig into these types of results and the various rich results test tools you can use to continually optimize your SEO efforts.
Rich Results vs. Rich Snippets vs. SERP Features
You may wonder what the difference is between rich search results, rich snippets, and enhanced search engine results page (SERP) features.
Put simply, rich snippets, also known as featured snippets, are a specific type of rich result that features a preview of content contained within a top-ranking organic search result.
In addition to rich snippets, you can also rank for other rich results or SERP features, including knowledge panels that summarize data points, image packs, carousels, and more.
You can rank for rich snippets and other SERP features with the help of structured data and schema markup, which you can learn more about how to implement in our complete guide to schema for SEO.
Who Needs Rich Results, and What Are Their Benefits?
Every type of website needs rich search results to help boost its rankings and connect with audiences. Whether you run an e-commerce, B2B, or any other type of business, you’ll want to rank for these with your site in the form of rich snippets and more.
The main benefit of ranking for these results is the ability to get to the top of SERPs. Rich snippets take position zero, i.e. the highest spot in search results, ranking above all other results below.
Making it to the top spot will attract more audiences when they perform relevant search queries, making them more compelled to visit your website over others around your results.
Schema vs. Structured Data vs. Rich Results
These concepts are similar and related to each other, but there are some key distinctions to make between them to understand how they work together.
Schema
This idea involves the use of a common language between search engines that contains guidelines for implementing structured data. Using schema, specifically through Schema.org or Google Search Central documentation, it’s relatively easy to learn how to give search engines context for your pages using structured data.
Structured Data
Structured data is the raw data you use to help search engines better comprehend your content, while schema is the language that contains this data in a presentable context to search engines. It’s a kind of metadata that describes what the content is all about, including whether your content is about ideas, people, or other things.
Rich Results
With the right use of schema markup and the structured data behind it, search engines may choose to display certain content in rich results. This content could appear at the forefront of search results and give people a clear idea of what your content is about before clicking on a link.
All the Types of Rich Data – The Complete List
If you want your website to appear in Google rich snippets, there are plenty of rich data types you could try to optimize your site for, including the following that the Google Rich Results Test covers:
Articles
This rich data can summarize the details of articles, including large thumbnails and titles.
Books
If a person searches for a book, this snippet could help them find it with the help of the Google Rich Snippets Test.
Breadcrumbs
People can see the position of a specific web page in a website’s hierarchy.
Carousels
If you have multiple items on one website, they can be displayed in a visual carousel that people can look through.
Courses
The Rich Results Test may also help you rank for courses, which creates lists of courses with brief summarizations and titles.
Datasets
If you have large data sets to display, these rich results can be displayed then.
Discussion Forums
These rich search results feature threads or other online discussions along with pieces of user-generated content.
Education Q&As
If students have questions about certain educational topics, this type of result will display answers in the form of digital flashcards.
Employer Aggregate Rating
Prospective employees can see what previous employees have rated an organization on platforms like Glassdoor with this snippet.
Estimated Salaries
People can see estimated salaries for specific professions and regions.
Events
Holding events or advertising them on your site? Potential attendees can learn more about them in a list of upcoming events.
Fact Checks
Users can see whether a source of information is credible based on cross-references with other credible sources.
FAQs
The Rich Snippet Testing Tool can also help you rank for a brief list of frequently asked questions and answers about a certain topic.
Home Activities
Users can find out about activities they can do at home with this snippet.
Image Metadata
Google will display more details about the images you post, including creators, usage rights, and credits.
Job Postings
Advertise jobs in a presentable format that helps people find the right position for them.
Learning Videos
Students and teachers alike can learn more about a topic with educational videos.
Local Businesses
Users can see details about local businesses, including ratings, hours, and CTAs to help schedule appointments.
Math Solvers
Give guidelines to help people solve and understand mathematical problems.
Movies
People can see a list of movies based on their searches, such as movies in specific genres or awards lists.
Practice Problems
Allow teachers and students to practice solving different types of math and science problems.
Products
Display details about products, such as reviews and pricing. They can show up in Google SERPS in one of four ways:
- Product Snippets
- Popular Products
- Shopping Knowledge Panel
- Google Images
Profile Pages
These pages focus on either an entity or an individual associated with a website.
Q&As
Provide details to users in the format of questions and answers.
Recipes
People can find recipes in a carousel or a single rich result.
Review Snippets
See blurbs from people’s reviews or ratings of all types of items, from businesses and apps to books and movies.
Sitelinks Search Boxes
People can see a search box that allows them to explore your site specifically.
Software Apps
Include details and ratings for apps, along with a link to download them.
Speakables
The Google Rich Results Test can help you rank for these snippets, which read out details using text-to-speech applications for increased accessibility. While it’s still in Beta users may see changes in requirements or guidelines for use.
Subscription and Paywalled Content
Protect content against spamming through cloaking by indicating paywalled content.
Vacation Rentals
Highlight various details about vacation rental locations in a particular area, including prices and ratings from guests.
Vehicle Listings
Display pricing and other details about vehicles on the market.
Videos
This snippet shows details about videos and options to play them or skip to specific segments.
The Rich Results Test Tools
How would you like to draw a picture in the dark? You probably wouldn’t because you can’t see what you’re doing.
That’s the way it is when you’re developing a web page for rich snippets and you can’t see the finished product. Fortunately, you can see the finished product thanks to the Rich Results Test tool.
Even better: that tool will notify you of any errors on your page that prevent Google from properly displaying your rich results. On top of that, Google will offer suggestions about how to fix the problems.
Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool
You can conduct a rich results test using the Google Rich Results Test tool within Google’s Structured Data Testing tool set.
This tool makes it easy to find out whether a web page on your site supports rich results. Meanwhile, the Schema Markup Testing Tool can also help you validate your structured data to further ensure it facilitates rankings with rich search results.
Use Cases for The Rich Result Test Tool
If you want a particular page to rank for rich results, you would run your page through this tool to see whether it qualifies for relevant results.
For example, an online electronics outlet might want to ensure product pages can appear in product results with pricing, ratings, and other details. Meanwhile, collections of products might be ideal for including in a carousel.
Testing the relevant pages will help determine what steps you’ll need to take to optimize them for rich snippets and other results.
In the next sections, I’ll explain how to use the Google Rich Results Test tool.
Option 1: Enter a URL or a Code Snippet
You can use the tool in one of two ways: you can enter a URL or you can enter a code snippet.
Pro-tip: go the URL route. That way, you don’t have to copy and paste code that you might not even understand.
Option 2: Choose a User Agent
The Rich Results Tool also gives you the option to select a user agent.
If you’re unfamiliar with a user agent, it defines the kind of browser that the app will use to evaluate and display your rich results. You can choose to view it as the Googlebot smartphone or the Googlebot desktop. Keep in mind that a mobile testing tool in SEO is critical to ensure your site is mobile-responsive.
If you pick Googlebot smartphone, the tool will “see” your web page just like a smartphone would display it if a real person hit the URL. If you pick Googlebot desktop, the tool will “see” your web page just like a desktop browser would display it if a real person hit the URL.
Another pro tip: Pick Googlebot smartphone.
Why? Because Google uses mobile-first indexing. That means when Googlebot is crawling all over cyberspace looking for web pages to index, it’s viewing those pages as a mobile browser.
So when you test with Googlebot smartphone, you’re getting a glimpse of how Googlebot normally sees your web page.
Also, Googlebot smartphone is the default. So you don’t have to do anything to use that option.
Review the Results
Once you’ve tested your URL or code snippet, Google will show you results.
The first thing you’ll notice on the screen is a statement about whether or not your page is eligible for rich results.
Hopefully, that box is green. If it’s not, then the tool will tell you what’s wrong and give you some tips about how to resolve the issues.
You can view the rendered HTML of your website as well. Just click the “View Rendered HTML” link in the results box. The HTML will appear on the right-hand side of the screen.
Take a look at the next box down. It shows you the detected items.
Those are the marked-up elements that Google will display as rich snippets in search.
Keep in mind: the tool doesn’t yet support all rich snippet types. That means some types of markup on your site won’t be listed in the detected items box.
Use the Rich Results Testing Tool With the Search Gallery
Whether you started working with an SEO company recently or you’ve optimized websites since the 1990s, you should periodically check out the Google Search Gallery just to see which types of rich snippets currently display in the SERPs.
Scroll through that list and get some inspiration about the kinds of snippets that people in your target market will appreciate. Pay particular attention to the right-hand side of the screen so you can see what they look like in search.
Then, implement the markup on your website.
If you’re not sure about the kind of markup you need to add, click the “Get Started” button in any one of the sections to get some details about what you need to do.
In a nutshell, you’ll need to add schema markup to your website. That’s going to be a challenge if you don’t know HTML and you’re not a web developer. It’s probably best to leave the whole effort to a qualified development team.
You could make things worse for your website if you muck around in code you don’t understand.
Once you’ve added the code to display the rich snippets, use the testing tool to make sure it works.
Rinse and repeat. Go find another rich snippet that works for your brand in search and add the relevant markup to your website.
Google Search Console’s Structured Data Report
Another tool you can use to help you rank for rich search results is the Structured Data report within Google Search Console.
This report is something you can monitor right in Google Search Console to validate structured data.
With this tool, Google will send an email notification every time Search Console identifies a new structured data error. However, keep in mind that it won’t notify you of existing errors worsening.
Why You Should Monitor with the Structured Data Report Regularly
Regardless of whether you receive new error notifications, it’s a good idea to check your structured data reports within Search Console to ensure everything’s fully functional.
If you identify any errors, you can quickly review and look for appropriate fixes.
How to Access and Read the Report
To read the report, simply log into Google Search Console and go to the enhancement section on the left-hand side. From there, you can see error reports covering four main structured data types, including breadcrumbs, videos, sitelink search boxes, and FAQs.
In each of these reports, you can see different errors, along with structured data that’s either valid or valid with warnings.
You can then look into the details about each error or warning and address issues accordingly.
Within the Unparsable Structured Data report, you can look for specific errors, such as:
- Incorrect value type
- Bad escape sequence in string
- Invalid number
- Reference to nonexistent item
- Invalid Unicode character
Once you fix these issues, you can indicate to Google within Search Console that you’ve done so by clicking on “Validate fix” for a specific error.
Schema.org
To test your website’s structured data, use Schema.org’s validator tool. Using this tool, you can determine if there are any specific structured data errors within a page’s code.
Simply enter a URL into the prompt on the main page of the tool, and it will load that page’s code on the left side, along with details about data markup on the right.
As you can see in this example from the Forbes “Billionaires” page, the validation tool lists the various parameters defining the page with the appropriate markup.
However, there is one “Uncategorized Error” listed.
Based on the performance of this page’s structured data, it has a place in the sitelink search box right below the homepage when you search for “Forbes” on Google.
If you want to get the most from your structured data with the help of this tool, there are some best practices to implement:
- Check competitors who show up for rich results and see what kinds of issues they’re experiencing or addressing
- Give as much context as possible to Google with rich structured data markup
- Use AI tools to help write structured data code to incorporate into your pages
- Optimize your pages for mobile users to connect with more audiences using mobile-friendly structured data.
Bing Webmaster Tools
One last rich snippet testing tool you can integrate is Bing’s Webmaster Tools. This solution can help you optimize specifically for Bing and complement your Google optimization efforts.
Unique Features With Bing Webmaster Tools
When using this tool, you get access to a host of Bing-centric features to help you optimize for rich search results on this platform, including:
- Backlinks: Look at your entire backlink profile to determine its strength when trying to rank on Bing.
- Keyword Research: Conduct research into keywords that people often search on Bing vs. Google for better Bing optimization.
- SEO Reports: See details about your site’s SEO, including any errors you need to resolve.
- Site Scan: Have the Site Scan feature crawl your website to look for various technical SEO errors.
How to Optimize for Bing
Want to boost your Bing rankings? Here are some best practices to implement:
- Build a network of strong backlinks on authoritative sites leading back to yours.
- Adhere to Bing Webmaster guidelines, which establish that content should be user-centric and not spammy or otherwise search engine-centric.
- Clean up your website’s sitemap to allow Bing’s bots to crawl it more easily.
Google Rich Results Test Tool FAQs
1. Is the Rich Results Test Tool free to use?
Yes, like many of Google’s very helpful tools, the Google Rich Snippets tool is entirely free to use. Whenever you want to see how your site is performing in these results, simply enter the necessary parameters and see the results for yourself.
2. Why are my rich results not showing up?
If you run your website through the Google Rich Snippets Testing tool and find that it’s not showing up for any rich results, this could come down to multiple potential reasons.
For example, your site may not do well with the Google Rich Results Test tool if:
- Your site’s structured data coding contains any errors.
- Your pages are new, and Google hasn’t crawled and indexed them yet.
- Your structured data isn’t of adequate quality.
- Your structured data is irrelevant or false.
- You’re using multiple languages for markup, such as schema and JSON-LD.
3. Can I test mobile and desktop views?
Yes, using the Google Rich Results Test, you can test both mobile and desktop versions of your site to see how well it performs on mobile devices and computer browsers.
4. Is coding knowledge required to use Google’s Rich Snippets Test tool?
While it helps to have some coding knowledge to sufficiently structure your website’s data for rich results, you don’t need this knowledge to use the Google Rich Results Test tool.
5. How do rich results differ from regular search results?
Rich results stand apart from conventional results in that they’re more visual and prominently displayed, providing more information at a glance to help gauge usefulness and relevance.
6. What happens if the tool finds issues in the structured data?
If you see errors in Google’s Rich Results Test or any other testing tool, you can go through each error and address it. Usually, these tools will give you some guidance regarding the fixes you need to implement for each error to resolve it.
7. Does the Rich Results Test tool guarantee my page will appear?
No, simply running your website and individual pages through this tool won’t help you optimize your pages. You must implement good SEO and structured data in your website’s code using the latest best practices to appear for rich search results.
8. What is the difference between Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool and Google Search Console’s Structured Data Report?
While Google’s Structured Data Testing tool can help you look for issues within each page’s code when it comes to markup and all types of results, Google Search Console’s report will indicate errors for four specific types of rich search results, including FAQs, sitelink search boxes, videos, and breadcrumbs.
9. How can I use the Schema.org Validatoy effectively for my website?
Whenever you create a new page or optimize an existing page with structured data, run it through Schema.org’s Validator tool to see how it will perform based on the integrity of your markup. This tool can give you an overview of your schema markup, including all relevant parameters, along with errors you need to fix.
10. Can I use these tools to test the dynamic content on my website?
The Schema App’s Structured Data Tester is a specific tool you can use to test structured data in dynamic content on your site.
Get Started with Rich Results Now
For some help with optimizing for rich search results and rich results tests, entrust the experts at Ignite Visibility for reliable search engine optimization and much more.
When you turn to us, you’ll benefit from:
- Campaigns that optimize for rich snippets and other similar results
- Accurate and rich structured data that help with rich search results and conventional SEO
- Help with all technical SEO aspects
- High-quality content that connects with users
To learn more about what we can do for your website, reach out to Ignite Visibility today!
