How to appear in Google's rich results

“As of January 29, 2021, data-vocabulary.org markup will no longer be eligible for Google's rich results features. To remain eligible beyond this date, you must replace data-vocabulary.org markup with schema.org markup."

Google Search Central

As of January 29, 2021, only schema.org website tagging will be eligible for Google's rich results features.

What does this mean for the SEO of your website and more particularly of your Store Locator pages?

1. What is schema.org?
2. What is a structured data schema?
3. What does it mean if your Store Locator is not under schema.org?
4. You are using the schema.org structure, how to optimize it best?

1. What is schema.org?

Schema.org is a collaborative community whose goal is to create, manage and promote structured data schemas on the internet, openly accessible. In addition to people from the founding companies (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex), it has substantial participation from the wider web community.

2. What is a structured data schema?

A structured data schema or markup allows you toorganize the information on your web pages. This helps Google understand the content of the page and thus provide users with the most relevant results for their query.

More specifically, structured data are coded elements in the markup that are not visible on the web page and that allow structuring with a proper grammar (schema) the various information present on your pages. Thanks to this special “grammar” Google is able to precisely identify the type of element included in the page code. It can then propose in the Search and Maps search results the most relevant information to users based on their history, location, query,...

In addition to helping Google provide more relevant search results, structured data also helps to bring up pages as rich results* during a query. These allow you to highlight a result and thus generate more engagement and clicks to your pages.

* Rich Results

Rich results correspond to all search results that incorporate rich information (reviews, prices, hours, products, services, ...) within the search results page - SERP. We speak of a rich result as opposed to a classic result, composed of a URL, a title and a description.

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In Practice :

The integration of structured data in the markup allows search engines to better understand the content of your page and its relevance for certain types of queries.

Google uses structured data to provide information about a web page and its content to users. This information is used for two main purposes:

1. Understand the content of the page and classify it : Google's robots will analyze and classify the information present on your pages. For example, on a Store Locator page of a pharmacy, we will find certain types of services integrated into the page code following the "grammar" of schema.org. In the example below, we identify with the grammar of schema.org a service, the type of service as well as the logo linked to this service.

1. Offer special features in search results : a page containing valid structured data is likely to appear in a search result with image, videos or via specific keywords or filters such as “restaurant mussels”.

3. What does it mean if your Store locator is not under schema.org?

If your website or your Store Locator store pages do not follow the schema.org structure, Google will have more difficulty judging the relevance of your Store Locator pages and they will be unlikely to appear on the first page of Google results for so-called “indirect” searches for certain types of information such as products, services, photos, reviews, and others...

The so-called "indirect" searches are searches relating, for example, to a sector and a type of product, but without mentioning a brand: eg "Pharmacy Vitamins"

The significant advantage of optimizing the structured data tags of your Store Locator pages is that they allow your information to stand out for these indirect queries.

Appearing in the top results for this type of query is extremely interesting to stand out from the competition, especially when your brand is not top of mind for a large segment of the population.

Additionally, if the structured data tags are not under schema.org or are not applied according to Google's guidelines, your Store Locator pages will have much less chance of appearing in the rich search results.

This means that during an indirect search, for example “mussel restaurant”, the Store Locator page of a restaurant offering mussels will not appear as a rich result with additional information such as ratings and reviews on the results page. This enriched information provides better visibility for your page as it provides key information that users are looking for at a glance.

For example, in the case of a supermarket, Google can display opening hours like this:

According to a study conducted by Datareportal, more than 80% of internet users specifically search for products and services online. For these products and services to be identified and appear in search results, they need to be referenced with the appropriate tags when coding your web pages and store locator.

4. You are using the schema.org structure, how to optimize it best?

Schema.org offers different formats to structure all kinds of data. In the case of “local business” it proposes, among other things, to identify :

• the opening hours
• payment methods
• the address and location
• brands associated with a product or service
• the events
• reviews
• the photos
• the services
• the products
• ….

This allows your Store Locator page to appear in indirect searches such as: "supermarket open nearby", "steak fries restaurant", …

>> Checklist: Optimize structured data tags under schema.org

In order to stand out in search results, it is important touse and complete the structured data tags specific to each point of sale.

1. Code structured data tags :
   Here is the complete list of tags offered for points of sale : https://schema.org/LocalBusinessGoogle prefers the structured data JSON-LD ("JavaScript Object Notation-Linked Data") format because it allows to properly separate what users see and the information intended for the search engine.
2. Test structured data during development to verify that your store page tags are optimized via Rich Results Test
3. Check the status of your pages after deployment with the Rich Results Status Reports tool

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