What are rich results?

What are rich results?

Formerly called rich snippets, rich cards, enriched results, a rich result is simply an enhanced search result that contains additional information (text, carousel, visual content, data, etc) in search engine results pages (SERP). See image below.

Example of a rich result

What are rich results; a rich result

As you can see from the image above, the search term was “vr box” and the rich result includes ratings (2.6 from 590 reviews) and price (339.00INR). These rich results allow searchers to view and interact with site contents directly from search results page.

For example, if you wish to buy a vr box, searching for it will give you results like the one above. These results allow you to compare different vr boxes (based on reviews and price) directly from SERP and decide which vr box to go for.

This is unlike ordinary (“non-rich”) results which lack these extra details as seen in the image below:

Example of an ordinary/non-rich result

What are rich results; an ordinary result

The ordinary/non-rich result above is from the same Amazon site as the rich result, the difference between the two is the “richness”. While the first result contains additional details (ratings, price), the second doesn’t.

Sometimes, you can get both rich and ordinary results from the same source on the same SERP as you can see from the image below.

Ordinary vs rich results

What are rich results; an ordinary result vs a rich result

From the image above, notice that both the rich and ordinary result come from the same Amazon.in.

Rich results take different forms as follows:

The particular form a rich result takes depends on the structured data type used in marking it up. Simply put, if you have an online course and you’d like it to show in SERP as an online course, you need to use structured data to mark it as an online course for search engines.

Other examples of rich results

i. A top story rich result

What are rich results; a rich result showing top stories

ii. An article type rich result from Wikipedia

What are rich results; Article type rich result

An event type rich result

What are rich results; an event type rich result showing events in New Jersey for December 2018

Conclusion of what are rich results?

In conclusion, rich results are simply search results that contain extra information to help searchers to better understand, utilize and interact with web contents directly from SERP.