Introducing schema.org: Search engines come together for a richer web

(Cross-posted on the Inside Search Blog)



Today we’re announcing schema.org, a new initiative from Google, Bing and Yahoo! to create and support a common vocabulary for structured data markup on web pages. With schema.org, site owners and developers can learn about structured data and improve how their sites appear in major search engines. The site aims to be a one stop resource for webmasters looking to add markup to their pages.



Search engines have been working independently to support structured markup for a few years now. We introduced rich snippets to Google search in 2009 to help people find better summaries of reviews and people, and since that time we’ve expanded to new kinds of rich snippets, including recipes and events. We’ve been thrilled to see content creators across the web—from stubhub.com to allrecipes.com—add markup to their pages, and today we’re able to show rich snippets in search results more than 10 times as often as when we started two years ago.



We want to continue making the open web richer and more useful. We know that it takes time and effort for webmasters to add this markup to their pages, and adding markup is much harder if every search engine asks for data in a different way. That’s why we’ve come together with other search engines to support a common set of schemas, just as we came together to support a common standard for sitemaps in 2006. With schema.org, site owners can improve how their sites appear in search results not only on Google, but on Bing, Yahoo! and potentially other search engines as well in the future.



In addition to consolidating the schemas for the categories we already support, schema.org also introduces schemas for more than a hundred new categories, including movies, music, organizations, TV shows, products, places and more. As webmasters add this markup to their sites, search engines can develop richer search experiences. With webmaster feedback, we’ll be able to regularly publish new schemas for sites to use and, in turn, expand the list of queries with rich results. For webmasters who have already added microformats or RDFa currently supported by rich snippets, their sites will still appear with rich snippets on Google. You can learn more on our Webmaster Central Blog, Help Center and on schema.org.

Schema.org provides a wide variety of vocabularies webmasters can use to mark up their pages.

While this collaborative initiative is new, we draw heavily from the decades of work in the database and knowledge representation communities, from projects such as Jim Gray’s SDSS Skyserver, Cyc and from ongoing efforts such as dbpedia.org and linked data. We feel privileged to build upon this great work.



We look forward to seeing structured markup continue to grow on the web, powering richer search results and new kinds of applications.



Posted by Ramanathan Guha, Google Fellow

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Go Inside Search to get the most out of Google

On Tuesday, we held a media event in San Francisco to introduce new and faster ways to search using your voice, an image or Instant Pages. We also launched Inside Search, a new website that hosted a live stream of the event. Inside Search contains a wealth of information about search and we wanted to let you know more about it.



When providing detailed information about a new search feature, we often link to an official landing page from the blog post (such as this one for Google Instant or this one for Google Images with sorting). Since there wasn’t one central place you could find all that information, we created a one-stop shop for all search-related features, tips and tricks. Thus, following the release of the new Inside Search blog, we bring you a deeper look Inside Search.



Whether you’re a beginner to web search or a search master, you’ll find all the search shortcuts you need under the Features section of the site. For example, most people don’t realize that the Google search box is a calculator, a world clock and a unit converter. You can also discover tips like how to use translated sites to search for [crepe recipes] on French sites or how to use an asterisk in a phrase or question so Google can fill in the blanks.

In addition, if you ever wonder how search takes your query and delivers results, you can use Inside Search to get an under-the-hood look at the technology behind Google Search. There are interactive diagrams with information on how far every query has to travel to get an answer back to you, how often we run experiments (we ran over 6000 in 2010 alone), how much time has gone into developing the algorithm and more. We’ve also included the Search Globe, an interactive display of searches around the world, on this page.



Inside Search also takes advantage of HTML5 to create a more interactive experience throughout the site, so instead of just clicking to read a list of search facts, you can do something a little more fun, like pick up a test tube with your mouse and pour the solution onto the Google homepage to reveal interesting facts about search:

Finally, be sure to visit the Playground section of the site. There, you can try your hand at the A Google a Day trivia game, browse our gallery of past Google doodles and be on the lookout for new fun additions coming soon.

To learn new search tips, get a behind-the-scenes look at Google technology or find out more information about the announcements from Tuesday’s event, visit the new site at www.google.com/insidesearch.



Posted by Johanna Wright, Director, Search Product Management

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