Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Hello, X-Carters!

I am glad to announce release of Rich Google Search Results module

http://www.x-cart.com/sites/default/files/modules/rich_google_search_180x180.png

Rich snippet is a way to get more potential customers from Google search results pages. It's said that the usage of this technique might boost your websites click-through ratios up to 30%!

It's a known fact that if customers see informative and eye-catching information from the page, they are more likely to click through. Compare these two snippets:

Usual Google search results:
http://www.x-cart.com/sites/default/files/uploads/poor_snippet.png

Impact of Rich Google Search results module on the search result:
http://www.x-cart.com/sites/default/files/uploads/rich_snippet.png

If your results are more attractive for visitors, they are more likely to click through your links. Consequently it may improve your rankings.

The key changes in appearance are:

http://www.x-cart.com/sites/all/themes/xcartcom/images/checkmark.png Path to your store page is displayed as a chain of breadcrumbs instead of a simple URL

http://www.x-cart.com/sites/all/themes/xcartcom/images/checkmark.png Product price is shown directly at the search results page

http://www.x-cart.com/sites/all/themes/xcartcom/images/checkmark.png If your product has any options or variants that modify the product's price, it will be shown as a range of the prices

http://www.x-cart.com/sites/all/themes/xcartcom/images/checkmark.png Customer star rating is shown directly on the search results page

http://www.x-cart.com/sites/all/themes/xcartcom/images/checkmark.png Indicates whether reviews are available for the product

http://www.x-cart.com/sites/all/themes/xcartcom/images/checkmark.png Indicates whether the product is in stock


Rich Google Search Results add-on can be purchased on our official website

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

I've already purchased it, I thought it was out a while, aha good mod to have. Even if it improves CTR by 1% it's worth it IMO! A must have. :D

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Thank you for purchasing it, much appreciated! Yes it was out a bit earlier, but I had no time to announce it till today, unfortunately.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

very nice module Alexander.
is this available with x-cart gold plus ?
It's design to show reviews & ratings of "Advanced Customer Reviews module" ?

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Thank you very much. Here are answers to your questions:

1. This module is not included into GoldPlus edition. However, it can be purchased separately and easily installed into X-Cart GoldPlus

2. It works with Advanced Customer Reviews if it's installed and enabled. Otherwise, it uses the built-in Customer Reviews module.

P.S.: some more useful information in our online manual for this module:
http://help.x-cart.com/index.php?title=X-Cart:Rich_Google_Search_Results#System_requirement s

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Hi Rocky, Can you provide either here or in the manual tips for using in 3rd party templates. I can hunt around in an x-cart template and find what I need but it would save me time and be helpful to others. Thanks! Paul

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Hi, Paul!


Thanks for the suggestion!

We will add it to KB soon, but anyway the basic instruction on patching 3rd party skins is:
1) Take all patches from the x-rich-gsearch-results.patches/skin/common_files/ directory.
2) Apply these patches to 3rd party templates as closely as possible.

Please, let us know if it helps.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Hi Tony!

Thank you very much for your suggestions. I'm leaving on vacation for a week and hopefully the upgrade pack for 4.5.3 will be available when I return. I'll report back when I've installed and successful.
Have a great day! Paul

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Sure, should you encounter any issues or questions during the add-on installation feel free to contact us.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Hi,

I purchased this mod and have installed it. Using Google's Structured Data Testing Tool I can see that all the expected attributes are being picked up from my product pages except the rating is not being displayed. Review comments are being displayed but not the rating out of 5 stars.

Does this mod display ratings for everyone else? If so can anyone suggest what I look at to correct it?

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Hi!


If you are using it on X-Cart 4.1.12, then this behavior is correct.

X-Cart 4.1.12 does not have native Star rating system, it uses word rating (Excellent, Good, etc) instead. That's why rating cannot be aggregated.

Possible solution for this situation is to use Advanced Customer Reviews module that implements star rating plus dramatically enhances the whole customer reviews section.

Will it work for you?

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

DavyMac, first of all thank you for purchasing our module. As for your question, as I can see you are currently running X-Cart 4.1.11 version. Please refer to the following quote from Rich Google Search Results article on our help portal:

http://help.x-cart.com/index.php?title=X-Cart:Rich_Google_Search_Results#System_requirement s


Thus, if you want the star rating to be shown as well you should purchase and install Advanced Customer Reviews module:

http://www.x-cart.com/extensions/modules/advanced-customer-reviews.html


P.S.: Oh, as I can see Tony has already answered you

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Oh, that's disappointing!

Thank you for replying. I will take a look at the Advanced Customer Reviews mod.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Advanced Customer Reviews is now part of Gold+. So if you upgrade your store to 454, you will get this for free, and much more than that.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

By the way, we have published an article about patching 3rd party skins. You can find it here:
http://help.x-cart.com/index.php?title=X-Cart:Rich_Google_Search_Results#How_to_patch_a_3rd _party_skin_a...Results_module

Check it out and let us know if there are any questions.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Hi,

We are on 4.1.8 and 4.1.9 and don't use customer reviews at all. What will Google display for this? We don't want 'No reviews' to show up as it will look like we are a new store, and not one that has been in business for 11 years. Ideally we would like the reviews part of the rich snippets to not show at all in the Google results.

Anyone know if this is possible?

Thanks,

Steve

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Hi, Steve!


You should not worry about it.

The way Rich Snippet works is:
1) If there are special tags for ratings on a page, then Google will build up a star rating for them.
2) If there are no these tags, then nothing will be displayed.

So, in your case, Google SERP will not display stars, but it will not display "no reviews" label either.

Any other questions, feel free to ask.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Thanks for the info.

It looks like the mod will work for us.

Steve

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

That's great. We are happy to hear that.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

This is odd. We still do not have the new rich snippets appearing in the google results, but if you run a test from http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.babyhopes.com%2F babyhopes-ovula...ips.html&html= the description is not the CDSEO description. It looks like the itemprop overrides the CDSEO meta description with a blank description.

It looks like the itemprop description takes precedence over the meta description, and if this is blank, then Google takes the description from the page contents.

If you look at the page source, the meta description at the top of the page is the correct CDSEO description, but later on the page is this.

<div itemprop="description" ><br />

Which is incorrect.

Where is the itemprop looking for the product description and why is it not finding anything?

Thanks,

Steve

EDIT. I have removed the itemprop description from the templates for now. Not sure what effect this is going make for Google. I am hoping that they will take the meta description from the page, but the google test page doesn't show the description they will use, but at least the empty itemprop description has gone.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Hi, Steve!

When did you install Rich Google Search Results module?
As far as I see, Google indexed your site on 28 Oct last time and the most likely by that time, there was no microdata tags in your pages, so you should wait when Google indexes your site again and after that Rich snippet will appear in SERP.

As for description here:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.babyhopes.com%2F babyhopes-ovula...ips.html&html=

This tool is for testing of Rich snippet ONLY, i.e. it does not take into account any meta description. Your meta descriptions in real SERP will be OK, because our module does not alter meta descriptions at all.

Considering above, I do suggest to return <div itemprop="description"> tags back to the code of your pages. Otherwise, if Google indexes your site and does not find this tag, it will not gather all needed information for Rich snippet and you will have to wait for next indexing again.

Any questions, feel free to ask.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Hi,

But what will google take to be the description that appears in the search results? Will it take the itemprop description or will it take the meta description? We must have the meta description appearing, otherwise all our SEO will change for the worse.

Steve

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Well, according to SEO resources like http://www.highrankings.com/metadescription

proper meta description is the major source of content for excerpt on SERP.

Google itself does not provide direct answer to how description on SERP is built, but I believe that - in your case - it will remain the same after implementation of RGSR.

At least, we did not have any complaints about ruining custom meta descriptions after usage of our module.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Thanks for the info.

Does anyone have an example page that uses rich snippets, that has been indexed in google? I would just like to look at the page source and compare it to the google search result to see if google has picked up the correct meta tag description and not the product itemprop description.

Thanks,

Steve

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Has anyone gotten this working with the Ability template that would have instructions?
Can't seem to get it to work correctly using the third party skin instructions.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Feel free to contact our support department, we will be glad to assist you. You may refer to Alexander Diatchkov in your request.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

I think I was able to get it working. The output looks like this:

Extracted structured data
Item
type: http://schema.org/product
property:
name: My product name
productid: sku:BAB-XS08
offers: Item 1 (does not show price on test,but appears to be same result for google's example)
description: The new product name description text of test product A. with a snippet of text that shows like this example and trails off with periods at the end...

Might want to add this (the link BritSteve posted up above) into the instructions for installing the mod on the X-Cart Wiki so that future users know how to test once installation is finished.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Agree, it might be useful. We will add it to instructions.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Hi,

Google last visited our site on November 20th, but the search results are still not showing the rich snippets.

If you do a Google search for 'aimstrip pregnancy test' then our website babyhopes.com is the first result returned, and you can see that the rich snippet information is not there.

Using the Google webmaster tool for rich snippets, the page and result preview looks fine.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.babyhopes.com%2F aimstrip_pregna...ips.html&html=

Any idea why Google is ignoring the rich snippets?

Thanks,

Steve

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Please, post a ticket about this issue into our Helpdesk.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Will I be charged to investigate this issue? Do you have any examples of this mod where we can see the Google results showing the extra information?

Steve

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

No, Steve, you won't be charged. We will just check it and try to find out what could be wrong. Please post a new ticket via HelpDesk

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Thanks Alexander,

I will leave it for the moment and keep checking. The mod is working and putting the correct itemprops into the pages, so it must be a problem with Google. I notice that Bing hasn't picked up the extra fields either. I have checked the Google documentation, and all the required fields are there.

Just a couple of points that you may want to consider.

The description is not very good. Taking page content from the top is not a good choice for the itemprop description. If you have other text at the top of the page that doesn't relate to the product, then the description will be incorrect. I think that you should take the CDSEO or standard meta description and use that as it will be much more relevant in most cases. I have removed the itemprop description as I don't want Google to pick it up the way it is at the moment. The description is not a required field thankfully.

You may also want to consider picking up the thumbnail image if it exists and using it for the itemprop image.

Steve

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Please, let us know the results after further checking.

As I know, Bing still does not support Rich Snippet for products, so no wonder why it does not display it.


The description field in the Product structure should be a description of a product, so it is incorrect to use meta description instead there.

I mean, if some page contains the <div itemscope itemtype="Product">..</div> element, it tells Google that this page contains information of some product in structured format. This product schema describes the actual properties of a product and that's why we use actual product description there.


That would be great to display image in Rich Snippet. Product schema even contains image property, but, unfortunately, this image is not used anywhere in the Snippet at the moment.

Hopefully, Google will add support for that. Now Google only supports images in Review and Person objects.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

I think you will find that Google does support product images.

Look at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146750

Looking at the source of one of my product pages that has the rich snippets, I see the following.

<meta itemprop="image" content="" />

I assume that is put there my your rich snippets mod, but it is empty.

Steve

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Yes, Google supports the image property, but it is not used in the Rich Snippet. That is the main problem.


That's not expected result. By default, you should have the image specified in the content field.

As I understand, you have installed the module for 3rd party skin on your own, so please check why the image property is empty in your store. If you face any problems, you are welcome to create a ticket in our HelpDesk.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

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Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Thanks for the offer :).....I want to buy this module can any one QT confirm that it works with CDSERO Pro ?

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Hi!

We have not yet heard of any problems with CDSEO, so you should not worry about it.

However, if there are any issues - which we are not aware of - we will be glad to to sort them out.

Re: Rich Google Search Results module released
 

Hi feakie,
Thanks for the clarification. I have placed the order :)