Category: Google Webmaster Blog

Evolution of search results for queries like [peanut butter cookies recipe]: with rich cards, results are presented in carousels that are easy to browse by scrolling left and right. Carousels can contain cards all from the same site or from multiple sites.

We’re starting to show rich cards for two content categories: recipes and movies. They will appear initially on mobile search results in English for google.com. We’re actively experimenting with more opportunities to provide more publishers with a rich preview of their content.

We’ve built a comprehensive set of tools and completely updated our developer documentation to take site owners and developers from initial exploration through implementation to performance monitoring.

Browse the new gallery with screenshots and code samples of each markup type.

We strongly recommend using JSON-LD in your implementation.

• Find out which fields are essential to mark up in order for a rich card to appear. We’ve also listed additional fields that can enhance your rich cards.
• See a preview in revamped Structured Data Testing Tool of how the rich card might appear in Search (currently available for recipes and movies).
• Use the the Structured Data Testing Tool to see errors as you tweak your markup in real time.

Check how many of your rich cards are indexed in the new Search Console Rich Cards report.

• Keep an eye out for errors (also listed in the Rich Cards report). Each error example links directly to the Structured Data Testing tool so you can test it.
• Submit a sitemap to help us discover all your marked-up content.

In the Rich Cards report, you’ll see which cards can be enhanced by marking up additional fields.

A new “Rich results” filter in Search Analytics (currently in a closed beta) will help you track how your rich cards and rich snippets are doing in search: you’ll be able to drill down and see clicks and impressions for both.

A: Yes, you can! We’ll keep you posted as the rich result ecosystem evolves.

A: The Structured Data report will continue to show only top-level entities for the existing rich snippets (Product, Recipe, Review, Event, SoftwareApplication, Video, News article) and for any new categories (e.g., Movies). We plan to migrate all errors from the structured data report into rich card report.

A: Technical and quality guidelines apply for rich cards as they do for rich snippets. We will enforce them as before.

Learn more about rich cards in the Search and the mobile content ecosystem session at Google I/O (which will be live streamed!) or on the Developer site. If you have more questions, find us in the dedicated Structured data section of our forum, on Twitter or on Google+.

Posted by Na’ama Zohary, Search Console Team, and Elliott Ng, Product Management Director, Search Ecosystem

(Cross-posted from the Google Security Blog.)
Every week, over 10 million users encounter harmful websites that deliver malware and scams. Many of these sites are compromised personal blogs or small business pages that have fallen victim due to a weak password or outdated software. Safe Browsing and Google Search protect visitors from dangerous content by displaying browser warnings and labeling search results with ‘this site may harm your computer’. While this helps keep users safe in the moment, the compromised site remains a problem that needs to be fixed.

Unfortunately, many webmasters for compromised sites are unaware anything is amiss. Worse yet, even when they learn of an incident, they may lack the security expertise to take action and address the root cause of compromise. Quoting one webmaster from a survey we conducted, “our daily and weekly backups were both infected” and even after seeking the help of a specialist, after “lots of wasted hours/days” the webmaster abandoned all attempts to restore the site and instead refocused his efforts on “rebuilding the site from scratch”.

In order to find the best way to help webmasters clean-up from compromise, we recently teamed up with the University of California, Berkeley to explore how to quickly contact webmasters and expedite recovery while minimizing the distress involved. We’ve summarized our key lessons below. The full study, which you can read here, was recently presented at the International World Wide Web Conference.

When Google works directly with webmasters during critical moments like security breaches, we can help 75% of webmasters re-secure their content. The whole process takes a median of 3 days. This is a better experience for webmasters and their audience.
How many sites get compromised?

Over the last year Google detected nearly 800,000 compromised websites—roughly 16,500 new sites every week from around the globe. Visitors to these sites are exposed to low-quality scam content and malware via drive-by downloads. While browser and search warnings help protect visitors from harm, these warnings can at times feel punitive to webmasters who learn only after-the-fact that their site was compromised. To balance the safety of our users with the experience of webmasters, we set out to find the best approach to help webmasters recover from security breaches and ultimately reconnect websites with their audience.
Finding the most effective ways to aid webmaster

1. Getting in touch with webmasters: One of the hardest steps on the road to recovery is first getting in contact with webmasters. We tried three notification channels: email, browser warnings, and search warnings. For webmasters who proactively registered their site with Search Console, we found that email communication led to 75% of webmasters re-securing their pages. When we didn’t know a webmaster’s email address, browser warnings and search warnings helped 54% and 43% of sites clean up respectively.
2. Providing tips on cleaning up harmful content: Attackers rely on hidden files, easy-to-miss redirects, and remote inclusions to serve scams and malware. This makes clean-up increasingly tricky. When we emailed webmasters, we included tips and samples of exactly which pages contained harmful content. This, combined with expedited notification, helped webmasters clean up 62% faster compared to no tips—usually within 3 days.
3. Making sure sites stay clean: Once a site is no longer serving harmful content, it’s important to make sure attackers don’t reassert control. We monitored recently cleaned websites and found 12% were compromised again in 30 days. This illustrates the challenge involved in identifying the root cause of a breach versus dealing with the side-effects.

Posted by Kurt Thomas and Yuan Niu, Spam & Abuse Research