How to use rich cards for you blog of recipies and food

In May 2016, Google announced its new search results format with structured data. As with the successful update of Rich Snippets, this structured data has allowed Google to present more attractive visual search results, designed to match the content that users are looking for.

Rich cards are very similar to rich snippets, but use a card carousel feature with a higher resolution image to improve the search experience. In addition, it shows at a glance all the relevant information, with the option to delve more directly into the source page.

According to Schema.org, this new Google format also requires very specific structured brands. Rich Google cards have had an immediate positive effect on the experience of users accessing the site from mobile devices.

When it comes to structure, rich cards are similar to the product ads that Google launched years ago. These are displayed at the top of the search engine results pages for mobile devices. But, unlike these, the rich cards are actually part of the organic search results screen.

The most complete results

This new revolution has come little by little to each of the industries, starting with maps and business, then with hotels and reservations, continuing with flights, movies and finally even with recipes.

These enriched letters mark the content of the recipes with structured data to provide enriched results and specific lists for each recipe, including user opinions, useful information and preparation and cooking times. From there, the page will be suitable for different functions, depending on how the structured data is added:

The focus of the new results format of the recipes is found in the presented image that accompanies the search result. As with snippets, rich cards offer some or all of the following additional information in the search results:

Duration of preparation
Cooking time
Ingredients
Number of calories
Nutritional information
Description
Classification

Rich Cards and Rich Snippets also include an external link to the website where the content is displayed. But the short teaser, which is also the “description” is excluded from the rich cards in favor of a more compact format and a larger image display. However, it is still easy to find the results from the main page.

Google only displays rich cards on search results pages that respond to inquiries made on mobile devices. Therefore, if you search on a desktop or laptop PC, only rich snippets will be displayed at this time. Currently, there is still no information available on whether Google plans to maintain this separation or explore a Rich Cards desktop format as well.

How to take advantage of Rich Cards for cooking recipes?

The rich cards have very important elements that you can take advantage of: the need to have perfectly structured data to be able to show them to the users according to their searches. This means that web operators who wish to appear in any of the rich card formats have to organize their data in the correct way so that the Google crawler can read and interpret them before classifying the data accordingly. If, as the owner of a website, you decide not to use this structured data format, your results will only be displayed in the standard format. If you have previously implemented an appropriate set of structured data on your site to take advantage of this new wave of data, it will be easy for you to make additional adjustments to meet the Google Rich Cards criteria.

CG Media – NYC SEO