Two weeks ago Google announced “Rich Snippets,” a new campaign on their part to categorize frequently sought items. The four main categories they are focusing on at this time are people, businesses, products, and reviews.

What Google recognizes right now is patterns of letters. It cannot be said to truly understand them as words, let alone understand how they interact relative to each other. Perform a search for “Marissa Berger” and you will get a mix of company websites and individual social media profiles from different Marissa Bergers all across the country.

Rich Snippets will eventually give Google the ability to segregate these answers so that only people or only companies will appear in a given search. And depending on how well Google ties their various categories together, the service may even be able to eventually tell a searcher which businesses within 10 miles sell 10 karat diamonds, fresh baked Scones, translations of The Three Musketeers, or whatever else a shopper might be searching for.

Unfortunately, none of these new advances will happen automatically. You will need to get a coder or developer to mark-up the relevant information is on your website so that Google will know what to do with it.

While much of this new code can be built into a Content Management System, many such systems on the market are not currently compatible with Google’s program because it is brand new.

What Google Wants to Know About Companies

The Company Name
The URL (or website address)
The Physical Address
Any Public Telephone Numbers

It is especially important that you provide this information about your own company, but it can also be valuable to have a way to record it for other companies that you mention.

What Google Wants to Know About Products

Brand
Category of Product
Product Description
Product Name
Price
Where it Can Find an Image of the Product
Where the Product Page is Located