Work with Google's Riveting Rich Results Tool

by 10 Best SEO Team

Want to see if your website is eligible for rich results in Google? Well, now you can thanks to a new testing tool offered by the search engine giant.

What Are Rich Results?

Formerly known as rich snippets, rich results are search listings that contain more information than standard search listings. Normally, Google's search listings contain the page title, description, URL and publish date (if applicable). Rich results, however, contain additional information, such as ratings, reviews, images, prices and more. By creating deeper and more complex search listings, webmasters can make their sites stand out in a sea of copycat competitors.

Google Announces Rich Results Testing Tool

On December 19, 2017, Google announced a new testing tool that allows webmasters to check their website's eligibility for rich results. The rightfully named Rich Results Test reveals whether Google can generate structured data using its data. It supports all major markup specifications, including JSON-LD, Microdata and RDF.

It's important to note that Google's Rich Results testing tool currently only works for recipes, movies, jobs and courses. If the markup data is used for other content types, it won't pass the eligibility test. Google says, however, that it plans to support other content types in the future.

How to Use Google's Rich Results Tool

To use Google's Rich Results tool, enter your site's URL and click "Run Test." Google will then fetch your page's code while checking its eligibility for rich results. Within a few minutes, it should return a message saying either "Page is not eligible for rich results" or "Page is eligible for rich results." If the latter is true, the tool will also provide options to submit your page to Google, preview search result or view code.

Webmasters who use structured markup data should run their site's URL through Google's testing tool. Doing so provides a better understanding of how Google views your structured data and whether it's eligible for rich results.