Rich Cards the mobile-friendly replacement for Rich Snippets

So we were checking our client’s Google search console stats the other day, as we do, when we noticed a new menu item in the search console interface.

 

 

Much like when Google added the AMP support to GSC, we were intrigued and hopped over to the webmaster’s blog where we found them announcing the release of “Rich Cards” for mobile search results.

Rich Cards are a form of mobile friendly rich snippets that Google is displaying in search engine results under the form of a carousel. This would improve interaction with the rich snippet format on mobile devices and give us more opportunity to enhance the search engine listings of our customers as part of their search engine optimisation.

For the Webmasters the advantage is obvious, as their website will have more opportunity to stand out from the crowd and attract more traffic.

Source: Google Webmaster Blog

Currently the Rich Cards only appear in the US Google version on mobile devices and are limited to only 2 categories by default (Movies and Recipes), but … very importantly, it will be using the same schema.org mark-up as before.

Google has also updated the documentation and created a gallery with resources and examples to support the correct implementation of the mark-up, as there are some essential requirements to ensure they appear in search results.

 

Along with the Rich Cards, comes a revamp of the Structured Data Testing Tool which now looks a lot better allowing you to check for errors in real time.

JSON-LD is also now recommended for implementation which should make integration with Google Tag Manager a much better option.

 

 In the UK ….

If all goes well, we should see this feature roll out in the Google.co.uk search results sometime in the next 3 months. If all goes well with this initial test, then possibly even sooner. This means that by the time it gets to us we will be ready to implement it for our customers. But for now we will be keeping a close eye on Rich Cards.