Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Introducing rich cards

Webmaster Central Blog

Official news on crawling and indexing sites for the Google index

Rich cards are a new Search result format building on the success of rich snippets. Just like rich snippets, rich cards use schema.org structured markup to display content in an even more engaging and visual format, with a focus on providing a better mobile user experience.

Evolution of search results for queries like [peanut butter cookies recipe]: with rich cards, results are presented in carousels that are easy to browse by scrolling left and right. Carousels can contain cards all from the same site or from multiple sites.For site owners, this is a new opportunity to stand out in Search results and attract more targeted users to your page. For example, if you have a recipe site, you can build a richer preview of your content with a prominent image for each dish. This visual format helps users find what they want right away, so you're getting users who specifically want that especially delicious cookie recipe you have.We’re starting to show rich cards for two content categories: recipes and movies. They will appear initially on mobile search results in English for google.com. We’re actively experimenting with more opportunities to provide more publishers with a rich preview of their content.We’ve built a comprehensive set of tools and completely updated our developer documentation to take site owners and developers from initial exploration through implementation to performance monitoring.Explore rich card types and identify where your content fitsnew galleryTest and tweak your markup

Find out which fields are essential to mark up in order for a rich card to appear. We’ve also listed additional fields that can enhance your rich cards.

See a preview in the revamped Structured Data Testing Tool of how the rich card might appear in Search (currently available for recipes and movies).

Use the the Structured Data Testing Tool to see errors as you tweak your markup in real time.

Keep track of coverage and debug errorsnew Search Console Rich Cards report

Keep an eye out for errors (also listed in the Rich Cards report). Each error example links directly to the Structured Data Testing tool so you can test it.

Submit a sitemap to help us discover all your marked-up content.

Find opportunities for growth

Monitor performanceQ: Can I keep my existing rich snippets markup?A:Q: What about the Structured Data report in Search Console?A:top-level entitiesQ: What if I use the wrong markup?A:Learn more about rich cards in the Search and the mobile content ecosystem session at Google I/O (watch the recording on YouTube) or in our developer documentation. If you have more questions, find us in the dedicated Structured data section of our forum, on Twitter or on Google+.Posted by Na'ama Zohary, Search Console Team, and Elliott Ng, Product Management Director, Search Ecosystem