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How microformats affect search engine optimization ( SEO )

Microformat Diagram

So if you haven’t heard by now there is this new term called microformats spreading like crazy across the net. At first it can seem overly confusing but when digging into the heart of the matter the exact opposite is true. So what are microformats? Microformats are sets of simple data formats built for today’s technology (XHTML mostly) to solve simple problems. To speak in plain English a Microformat in most cases is a set of XHTML code embedded in web pages that provides a structured set of data that can be utilized for other means.

Since Microformats is such a new topic even for tech heads I have a brief explanation of what they are below, if you would like to skip straight to how microformats affects Search Engine Optimization then skip to the bottom of this article.

Remember back when “XML” was the huge buzzword of the time? The idea that anyone could sit down, open up a basic text editor, and create custom XML tags that fit their business from which anyone else could take and translate for their own was a revolutionary concept. Microformats is esentially an extension of this philosophy, only instead of a free-for-all of different XML tags microformats adheres to the basic rules of leveraging technology everyone already has access to aka XHTML via your web browser. The are 2 types of Microformats, they are compound microformats and elemental microformats, the difference between these two are as follows.

A compound microformat is an organized collection of data, for example:

<div class="vcard">
<a class=”url fn” href=”http://www.usweb.com”>Shaun Shull</a>
<div class=”org”>USWeb</div>
<div class=”adr”>
<div class=”street-address”>1060 Timberline Terrace</div>
<span class=”locality”>Ashland</span>,
<span class=”region”>OR</span>
<span class=”postal-code”>97520</span>
</div>
<div class=”tel”>1-866-273-1869</div>
</div>

This is an example of a commonly used microformat called hCard. An hCard is a collection of data about a person just like the typical vCard you may send over email. To utilize the hCard microformat you simply post code similar to this on your site which would display something like the example below.

Shaun Shull
USWeb
1060 Timberline Terrace
Ashland, OR 97520
1-866-273-1869

This box may look innocent enough when being viewed on a web page through your browser but in reality if any microformat bots or other tools read this code on your website they could easily take this information and do a million cool things with it including turning it into a standard vcard for people to use in their email client.

An elemental microformat is simply an attribute attached to an existing tag:

What this means is that instead of a big block of code providing a ton of data, an elemental microformat is a small snippet of code providing a brief bit of info. A good example of an elemental microformat in use is Technorati. For those of you who are big Technorati users then guess what, everytime you put a Technorati tag on your website you are utilizing an elemental microformat. How is this? It’s simple, the rel=”tag” in the link you post is a microformat called the Rel-Tag microformat. This microformat simply provides a way for bots and tools to know that you have posted this URL because you are tagging (aka categorizing) it to the word specified within your link.

Another common elemental microformat is XFN (Xhtml Friends Network). This is simply an attribute you place on links when linking to someone you know. For example I may link to my cousin Ed Shull with code that looks like this:

<a href="http://www.edshull.com/" rel="kin met">Ed Shull</a>

This code basically relays to any bots or tools scanning my webpage that “Ed Shull” is my kin and we have met. Imagine the possibilities of a web crawler such as Google being able to show my family tree simply by typing in my name in the search box. This idea and so much more can one day become a reality with the use of widespread microformat adoption.

Enough already, so how do microformats affect Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Well, I’m afraid to say that this answer is very simple. Currently microformats affect SEO the same way content on your website affects it. From a web crawlers perspective there is currently no distinguishing factor between a microformat and standard content on your website. Why is this? Well, microformats are composed of common XHTML attributes and tags of information that are used in a standardized way, therefore engines such as Google and Yahoo treat it as exactly that, standard information. Does this mean microformats are useless in search engine optimization? No, not at all, microformats may be undistinguishable by engines at the moment but they still provide valuable content for web crawlers to index. An hCard for example provides Google with useful data about yourself such as an email, phone number, address and photo, all of which will be indexed into the Google engine allowing people to find your webpage based on your personal information. Sure, it’s not an SEO breakthrough but content is content so if you can get this information indexed in the engine why not do it using a microformat method and help increase the awareness and availability of microformats as a whole.

One day search engine spiders will need to accommodate microformats.

Let’s face it, one day search engines will have no choice but to take microformats into consideration and they will certainly benefit because of doing so. Microformats provide valuable data that people are interested in, just like Technorati pushed elemental microformats to a level of common widespread use (although most don’t realize it), another popular site could just as easily leverage compound microformats causing even more need for engines to begin distinguishing microformats from standard webpage content. It’s a snowball effect that is happening right this moment.

So what are some examples of microformats benefiting search engine results?

Well, below are just a few scenarios where the utilization of microformats could make engines more useful and productive:

  • You perform a search for a persons name and see their family tree, business acquaintances, friends and significant others, along with the ability to download their vcard.

  • You search for a keyword such as “ford mustang” and receive a list of sites, photos, and documents that people have decided are related to the word “ford mustang” through tagging on their website.

  • You search for a product and receive a list of reviews related to that product which people all over the net have posted on their website.

  • You search for a specific date and receive a list of categorized events occurring on that date that people have posted on their website.

What really makes microformats so unique and exciting is that everything is decentralized. This means that no matter who you are or what website you post your microformat on, tools such as search engine spiders will finally have the ability to easily collect information in an organized fashion as if the entire internet was a large standardized database. This standardization allows companies to present a wide variety of tools and search data in a clean, easy to navigate, easy to understand way that has never been seen with the likes of today’s current search engines.

written by Shaun Shull

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Other Articles: Local Search Engine Marketing Search Marketing Agency

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 29th, 2006 at 8:57 pmand is filed under Web Development , Search Engine Marketing . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

102 Responses to “How microformats affect search engine optimization ( SEO )”

  1. seo Says:
    November 16th, 2006 at 11:01 pm

    If you dive into SEO without a thought of planning, you are unlikely to do well. Things to think of though, before you get started, are who your target audience are and how to reach them.

  2. Leo Says:
    January 15th, 2007 at 3:58 am

    I dont know but why i don find such informative and profitable blogs so often,I suspect blogging world is becoming so small that we cant find such lucrative blogs like this one.

  3. Paul Jensen Says:
    January 18th, 2007 at 3:30 pm

    Good article, but that bit about Microformats making it easier to search for content - wouldn’t it go against the business model of search engines to make the task of finding information too easy? How many ad’s would we click if we got the link we were after straight away?

  4. Shaun Shull Says:
    January 19th, 2007 at 4:26 pm

    Paul, I don’t really see microformats affecting the search engines business model negatively, in the end people will still need a centralized tool that aggregates and indexes all of the microformat content.

    I would say Wikipedia is a perfect example of how the search engines feel regarding this topic. Wikipedia and microformats share the same fundamental goal, to provide individuals the tools to add/edit information in the collective. Instead of search engines balking at Wikipedia they have instead embraced it, in fact type in 5 different terms into google, I would be amazed if you didn’t see Wikipedia listed on the first page for at least 3 of them.

  5. Blake Acheson Says:
    March 9th, 2007 at 4:52 pm

    The whole foundation of the Internet is built on a loosely written garbage of a language(HTML).

    Standardization is key and methodologies like this and xml are important in restoring order and conciseness to the www.

  6. iDonny Says:
    April 11th, 2007 at 10:47 pm

    Much as microformats and other methods of standardised representation of content hint on rigid structure, markup is actually moving away from the structure of HTML that had a fixed number of tags that could only be extended by releasing a new version, to XHTML which can accept new tags if the DTD can accept them, and finally to XML only markup which will enable each one of us to create our own tags and use them at whim. This to me does not sound like a situation where google or any other search engine is likely to know what I mean by because that tag is not centrally referenced (just like H1 or P may be). However, the advantage of XML only markup is that all content will have to be valid to even display, page markup will be lean and very easy for SE spiders to extract content (no more wading through FONT tags or even CLASS attributes and inline code). The future is now though! You can skip XHTML code all your pages in XML. client-side support for XML goes back to IE4 and netscape… that is in the days of CSS 1. Here is an example of a page marked-up entrely in pure XML - go ahead and test it in all your browsers… You can even send your own XSLT bot to scour it for content tht you can take back to your application and use… Does that sound better than microformats? http://www.cmsproducer.com/labs/xmlpagemarkup/idonnyxmlmarkup.xml

  7. Daniel Says:
    April 22nd, 2007 at 10:29 am

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  10. Dave Hambly Says:
    July 26th, 2007 at 2:12 pm

    We’ve been developing apps that make it easy to add microdata to your website for some time now.

    Here is ‘my’ observation about usefulness in SEO: SIOC (Shock) is by far the most useful/effective.

    If you are using Microformats, be sure and use Pingerati or MCPing, otherwise; what’s the point.

    We continue to investigate this broad area at RELAX SEO Services.

    Dave,
    CE - PSEM - RELAX SEO Services
    www.relaxseo.com

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  12. frank Says:
    August 17th, 2007 at 6:43 am

    Interesting Post.

    Have you done any tests with microformats to see if it has an effect ON SEO now…
    or is this a hypothesis for the future as microformats grow in popularity and in technology?

    frank

    Atlanta Search Engine Optimization

    SEO Atlanta

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    Alex Bell
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    Thanks for the article, I feel in 2008 folks are starting to catch up with the idea, myself included. I remember everyone buzzing about it at @media2006 and if Yahoo (major players in microformat usage) are able to influence Microsoft at this current moment in time, well it’ll be like a domino effect.

    This will without a shadow of a doubt be the next big thing for the web, even web search. Why not have events and contact details returned with search results? If I search for a new sofa, there’s an opportunity to present me with consumer and trade fairs thanks to hCalendar.

    Technically we should be extending XHTML to do this, but the vast majority of HTML developers don’t know what a blockquote is let alone what the abbr tag does, so keeping it simple is the way to go, hey we might even be able to communicate what the em tag is really for, shock horror!

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