Google Recognizing Contact and Social Networking Information Explained

With Google introducing its Rich Snippet format last month giving convenient summary information about the search results at a glance supporting product reviews and people. I’m sure we have started noticing these changes in Google search engine result pages.

Google’s first use of structured data will be in search results snippet with two kinds of objects: Reviews and People. Let us see in detail on how it recognizes people as the object in its search result. The information about people falls under Contact and Social Networking information. When it comes to contact Google recognizes the details derived from the hCard. Writing a simple hCard shouldn’t be an issue with the help of an hCard creator. Just copy the code and publish it simple as that. A sample hCard will be as below,

The next thing that Google recognizes in people is Social Networking information. It reads the XHTML Friends Network (XFN) friend, contact and acquaintance properties. Google accepts accept class=”friend” in addition to rel=”friend”. The “rel” notation is imported from XFN. Similarly, class=”colleague” and class=”acquaintance” are also accepted. The best example of this implementation in a Social Networking website is Facebook where when you search for a name it clearly list your friends list in the snippet helping the user to identify the person easily. Check the below example,

These updates in Search Snippet will really be useful and create good user experience in Google, more than this it will have an impact on the CTR too.

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