Comments on: Google Announces Full Support for Microformats in Local

By: Most Popular Articles from 2010 and Before | Understanding Google Maps & Local Search

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 15:39:40 +0000

[...] 6- Google Announces Full Support for Microformats in Local [...]

By: What’s Best: Microformats, RDFa, or Micro Data? | SEMClubHouse - Key Relevance Blog

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 17:22:47 +0000

[...] a recent post by Mike Blumenthal about Google’s announcement of supporting Microformats for local search, Andy Kuiper asked in the comments whether it would be best to go with Microdata [...]

By: Google Maps Rich Snippets for Local FAQ: Testimonials to be Treated as Reviews | Understanding Google Maps & Local Search

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 10:02:17 +0000

[...] Google announced support for Rich Snippets for Local 3 weeks ago, there were a number of unanswered questions. A [...]

By: Salim

Salim — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 19:56:00 +0000

Great article and excellent comments. Would some one mind briefly explaining how to incorporate these new types of changes ( h-card, html 5) into a wordpress website? To add, what is the process of getting approved by google to have your reviews featured ? Is there an industry standard review system that should be used?

Thanks Ahead.

By: Peter Cranstone

Peter Cranstone — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 16:38:26 +0000

Great post. We were doing real time GPS enabled search inside the mobile browser almost 5 years ago. The future of the web is clear – it’s going to be local. The issue now becomes if you know the location of a web page, can you tie that to the location of a user.

A solution for that is already available.

Cheers,

Peter Cranstone
5o9 Inc.

By: Marc's Voice » Almost end of Sept. ‘10 blogging

Marc's Voice » Almost end of Sept. ‘10 blogging — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 14:43:52 +0000

[...] Fulll microformats display in Google now. Prepare for the coming “Google Me” vs Facebook war to commence! [...]

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:22:34 +0000

@Ben

You make a great point. If traffic is why a content provider gives over their info to Google, they are probably in trouble. Yelp recognizes that issue.

But each content provider has a different need and point of view. Google doesn’t need to get them all, just some of them… for example DemandForce uses the fact that they have reviews in Google as a selling point to get Dentists to sign up for their service. For them the traffic is not the issue.

By: Google Announces Support for Microformats | ionadas local LLC

Google Announces Support for Microformats | ionadas local LLC — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:02:30 +0000

[...] Blumenthal has a great write-up on why hCard Microformat is important. Share and [...]

By: Chris Silver Smith

Chris Silver Smith — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:11:32 +0000

Andy: Whether to use Microdata vs Microformats is a good question. Google’s webmaster help section states that they’re supporting Microformats, RDFa, and Microdata right now. So, you could use it and get the same potential benefits right now.

The caveat to this is that relatively fewer people are using Microdata and HTML 5 itself right now. So, to my mind, using either one is a bit like using the first release of some 1.0 version of software — you’re essentially the guinea pig that the search engines will use to start developing their ability to interpret pages marked up with these protocols. There’s risk associated with being the first adopters of newest versions of HTML.

I’d generally advise being a member of the pack where SEO is concerned – if you want to use new features, use the protocol that more others will be using first and wait a little longer before adopting the new standard when it’s better tested.

Overall, using Microdata is very low risk because it’s merely semantic markup — if the search engine doesn’t recognize it, it can still make use of the text data that is visible on the page, though.

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 12:02:40 +0000

@Miriam
While I do think this is a trojan horse of sorts it is not really directed at the SMB… In the end, the SMB doesn’t really care if the client goes to his website or the places page just so long as he gets the sale. And Google already knows which website the business person has.

It is directed at the larger, multi location businesses that would rather not maintain a trillion local directory entries.

It is also death by a thousand cuts strategy directed at the larger review type sites etc…it is so that Google can more easily and with greater speed gather up the content from the likes of local newspapers, blogs and sites that are struggling to break through. It makes their job easier of communicating to Google the unique information that they have about the business without negotiating a direct relationship.

It will allow Google to have a much richer Places page with a great diversity of content… It may outrank the SMB website but more importantly from Google’s perspective it will be perceived, as Dave noted, as more valuable than the sites that compete for readers’ eyeballs.