What is a rich snippet?
A rich snippet is the standard search result with something added. The normal listing, the snippet, is a title, a URL and a line or two of description. A rich snippet adds information pulled from the page's structured data: the five stars and the number of reviews under a product, the price and stock status, the calories and cook time under a recipe, the date and venue of an event. The added detail sits with the listing and is drawn from markup the page's owner provided, usually in schema.org vocabulary.
Google introduced rich snippets in 2009 and the term stuck, even as the feature grew into image carousels, expandable panels and other formats that are no longer really snippets. Google's documentation now calls the whole family rich results, but search marketers, clients and most briefs still say rich snippet when they mean the enhanced listing.
Why it matters
Why rich snippets matter
A rich snippet answers a question before the click. A searcher comparing products sees the price and the rating in the results and chooses on that basis, so the listing with the snippet has an advantage over the one without, even a position or two lower. The elements also take space, pushing competitors down the screen, and on a phone that can be the difference between being seen and not.
For a brand, the snippet is also a credibility signal. Ratings from real customers, an author with a name, a film with a thumbnail: each tells the searcher that there is something substantial behind the link, which is a different message from a bare title.
In practice
How rich snippets work in practice
- 01
The page is marked up with structured data describing its content: product, review, recipe, event, article, video, organization, and so on. The markup goes into the page as JSON-LD, which Google prefers, or as microdata in the HTML, and it must describe what is actually visible on the page. A review rating in the markup needs the reviews on the page; a price in the markup needs the price on the page.
- 02
Google's crawler reads the markup, checks it against the guidelines for the type and, if it is valid and the page qualifies, may show the rich snippet. The Rich Results Test validates a single page; Search Console reports on markup across the site. Changes to the snippet follow the next crawl, which can take days. If the snippet disappears, the first checks are whether the markup still validates and whether the page still shows what the markup claims.
Watch out
What people get wrong about rich snippets
Faking the stars. Self-serving reviews, invented ratings, aggregate scores on pages that do not show the reviews: Google's guidelines prohibit all of it, and the consequence is a manual action that removes rich snippets from the entire site, not just the offending page.
The other mistake is treating the snippet as guaranteed. Valid markup makes the page eligible; Google chooses whether to display it, and it changes its mind. Build the markup because it is the honest description of the page, and treat the snippet as a bonus.
