Google's Mobile Search (Photo : Twitter)
Google has unveiled rich cards to make mobile search results more visually interesting. The format builds on rich snippets that site operators can add to current HTML so search engines can better understand which information exists on each web page. Rich cards also use schema.org like rich snippets to display content in a more visual and interesting way.
The content shows up in carousels and is easy to browse by scrolling left and right.
Rich cards are now available in the content categories of recipes and movies, according to Hot Hardware. They will originally appear in English mobile search results for google.com, and more categories will be released as the tech gets better.
Na'ama Zohary is on Google's Search Console Team and Elliott Ng is the Product Management Director of Search Ecosystems. They explained that rich cards help to attract more targeted users to a web page and make companies easier to be noticed in search results.
Google will be providing an instructional guide for site owners. This will help to learn which fields are required to mark up so rich cards appear, see a preview, get suggestions for improving cards, and monitor the cards' performance.
Site owners can still use rich snippets. In addition, Google will provide the same tech/quality guidelines for rich snippets and rich cards.
Google cards were featured at the recent Google I/O developer conference and addressed in live streams. In addition, the Alphabet company has included a dedicated structure data section on its Google+ and Twitter pages.
In related news, Google CEO Sundar Pichai shared on May 18, Wednesday, that the company has plans to move past traditional search engines. He unveiled the company's new digital assistant known as Google Assistant, according to MIT Technology Review.
The voice assistant is an upgrade of Google Now. It will also help the company to compete better with Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana.
Google Assistant can help people with many tasks. They include learning which movies are showing in local theaters, getting a summary of reviews for a certain film, and buying tickets for a movie showing at a certain time.
Google Assistant will later be rolled out for its mobile search apps. However, it will first appear in its new messaging app named Allo.
Here's a video on the appearance of rich snippets:
