The tech giant Google is best known for its search engine. Having multiple features to ease the process of searching, the company has added some minor addition to the already sophisticated feature.
On May 2016. Google has launched Rich Cards for Movies and Recipes. With the Cards, web owners can present a preview of their website's content straight within the Search results page. On November 21st, 2016, Google is expanding it to include Local restaurants and Online courses.
Initially available to only U.S.-based websites, the new Cards present websites in new UIs which are similar to carousels that can be scrolled left and right, or a vertical three-pack that can display even more pages.
The added feature was first revealed when Google completely revamped the documentation for article structured data in its developer section. It's a complete rewrite, specifically to highlight the differences between article markup for AMP pages and article markup for normal HTML pages. Moments later, the new beta feature around the structured markup was seen in its search results page, showing restaurant to be listed in Rich Cards powered by AMP markup.
To ease web owners, Google has also made some changes to its tools:
- The Structured Data Testing Tool to show markup errors and a preview card as it might appear on Search.
- The Rich Cards report in Search Console shows cards that contain errors, and which could be enhanced with more markup.
- The AMP Test helps validate AMP pages as well as the markup on the page.
While Google put more emphasis on AMP for Rich Cards, it's not required for Local Restaurant and Online courses to use the markup. What AMP does, is to provide Google Search users a consistent experience while having the pages to load faster than usual.
Furthermore, with AMP, users can easily swipe from one restaurant to the next, or from one recipe to other recipes straight within the website. This should be useful and engaging for mobile users.