Schema.org and microformats - has it helped you?

Marketing
1

Hi all,
Im just reading up on implementing schema.org code (as see here: schema.org - Getting Started) on my web pages. Has anyone noticed an increase in search position by implementing this?
Thanks

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AFAIK, the use of microformats was never intended to increase your search positions, but merely to allow Google to show a more customized listing for your webpage in the results at whatever position they appeared. For example, if you include markup for a set of reviews and star ratings, Google can show something like “11 reviews (4.5 stars)” under the page title in the results.

3

Maybe I was reading between the lines too much. I was thinking that the more accessible you make the information on your website to the SEs, the higher the SEs will rank you because they see you’ve put the time in to make the sites user friendly and SE friendly.

If I was to microformat products on an ecommerce site, do you think it would display the products in the SERPs, or is that just for people using Google Merchant Centre?

Im trying to establish whether its worth the time to microformat hundreds of websites. It seems to me that microformating isnt a ‘finished technology’, and they might bring something new out which would make this code defunct.

4

I suppose teh question I should be asking is: Has anyone any examples of microformatting their websites and what benefits it’s brought them?
Thanks

5

For what its worth, Ive just seen this on Googles site - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1211158:

Will using schema.org improve my site’s performance in search?
Google doesn’t use markup for ranking purposes at this time—but rich snippets can make your web pages appear more prominently in search results, so you may see an increase in traffic.

Ild still like to see any examples people have done of implementing schema.org microdata.

6

Look at Yelp. Click on any business with reviews and look at the HTML. It’s marked up with the hReview microformat and Google uses this when displaying Yelp listings in search results. I’ve seen plenty of microformats implemented and used with Google, but not specifically this schema.org site.

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