What is a Rich Snippet?

A rich snippet is a search result that includes extra visual information beyond the basic title, URL, and meta description. Examples include star ratings, recipe details, event dates, or FAQ accordions.

Rich snippets stand out in search results because they take up more space and provide more context. They're created when Google recognizes structured data on your page and decides to display it in search results.

Why They Matter

Rich snippets can dramatically increase your click-through rate. A recipe with star ratings and cooking time is much more clickable than a plain text result. An FAQ rich snippet puts your content directly in front of searchers before they even click.

Having a rich snippet doesn't directly improve your rankings, but the increased click-through rate and user engagement can lead to indirect ranking benefits. More importantly, rich snippets help you stand out from competitors.

Common Types

Recipe rich snippets show cooking time, ratings, and calorie information. Review rich snippets display star ratings and review counts. FAQ rich snippets show questions and answers in an expandable accordion.

Article rich snippets might show your headline image, author name, and publish date. How-to rich snippets can display step numbers and images. Event rich snippets show dates, times, and locations.

How to Get Them

Add the appropriate schema markup to your content. For blogs, Article schema is standard. If you write how-to content, add How-To schema. For FAQ sections, use FAQ schema.

Not all pages with structured data get rich snippets. Google chooses which results deserve enhancement based on relevance, quality, and user intent. Focus on creating helpful content first, then add proper markup to give yourself a chance at rich snippets.