Through most of its existence, Google+ has provided webmasters with the means to control the appearance of a page shared on Google+. By marking up a web page with the correct data, it was possible to reliably generate the desired title, image and description accompanying a link shared on Google+.
However, a recent update has removed descriptions altogether from Google+ snippets for pages. While titles and images still accompany Google+ web page links, the description has been replaced by the URL of the page in most circumstances.
[continue reading]
Tagged as:
Google Plus,
Rich Snippets,
Structured Markup
I've just come from the Semantic Technology and Business Conference in San Francisco, and it was both thoroughly enjoyable and highly instructive.
I was joined there on the panel "Search Marketing in a Semantic World" by my esteemed colleagues Matthew J. Brown and Barbara Starr. Our panel discussion was lively and, I hope, interesting and elucidatory for those that attended: thanks Matt and Barbara!
The conference sessions were not only interesting, but in aggregate both helped consolidate some thoughts about search marketing and the semantic web that have been on my mind for some time, and provided me with new perspectives on the relationship between the two disciplines.
Insofar as these ruminations led to a eureka moment it is this: an understanding of the semantic web is not simply a useful accessory for SEOs, but is now required by any search marketer who wants to excel in their chosen profession.
[continue reading]
Tagged as:
Entities,
Google Knowledge Graph,
Keywords,
Microdata,
RDF,
RDFa,
schema.org
