Overview of Rich Snippets, their jargon, and how you can get them for your Shopify store

I’m frequently asked what are Rich Snippets, Rich Cards, and what the hell structured data even means.

Here’s a short primer on everything about it, and why this matters for your Shopify store.

Structured data is a way of marking up data so it can be easily found and analyzed by search engines.

JSON-LD is a format of structured data that uses the JSON format.

Microdata/microformats are another format of structured data that typically is added inside of a theme’s HTML.

Rich Snippets are Google’s product and are used to enhance a site’s organic search results. A site is required to have structured data to get Rich Snippets (e.g. JSON-LD or microdata).

Rich Cards are a variety of Rich Snippets that appear on the top of the search results in a carousal. They are only used for Recipes and Videos right now, usually on mobile. Since Rich Cards are a version of Rich Snippets, they also require structured data.

Here’s another comparison of Rich Snippets and Rich Cards by Google. The screenshot there is a very good overview.

My JSON-LD for SEO app adds JSON-LD structured data to every page in your Shopify store. It includes products, business information, and the articles.

Once it’s installed and Google finds that data on your store, Google may enroll you in Rich Snippets. They also may enroll you in Rich Cards if you have those types of pages (Recipes, Videos). No one except Google has control over which sites get Rich Snippets/Cards but having structured data is the first step.

Hope this helps you understand what Rich Snippets are and how they work. There’s a whole bunch of technical details behind all of this but this is a good summary of it all.

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