rdfa microdata rich snippets and google search results

Question

I take it that stackoverflow discourages consolidating information concerning the same topic, assuming that that will result in sprawling topics... So, here is a clarifying variation on the same question I asked earlier.

I am trying to figure out what exactly google wants in a rich snippet to get a desired result. If I look for examples by searching, I usually see no matching snippet on the page that relates to the search results. Is this because people are submitting the snippets to google, or something else? Is there a path on a website that would usually be where I would find rdfa or microdata that google is using to base search results on?

For example, the goodrelations website mentions "best buy" a lot. If I search for "best buy", the part that is not an ad includes things like "weekly deals". If I look at the source of the web page, I don't see corresponding microdata or rdfa.

If the examples of rich snippets that google gives are what I should use. Why aren't I seeing these being used on web pages?

Answer 1

Google has probably just created a custom parsers for Best Buy and other "important" websites. So they can show relevant results. But they would need to keep up with cahnges to site structure, content, media, etc...

Hence there is now a standard so webmasters can supply the information in a structured fashion. Saving Google from doing the work and earning them more money.

Answer 2

I guess what you mean is Google Sitelinks.

This is not controlled with some specific metadata but by Google algorithms itself (and with some simple instrument in Webmaster Tools).

At the moment, sitelinks are automated. We're always working to improve our sitelinks algorithms, and we may incorporate webmaster input in the future.

You can find out more about this in Google specification.

And here is good blog post from Google that reveals some history behind.