At this year’s Pubcon 2016, I presented how I had added Knowledge panels, Sitelinks, Featured Snippets, and information from the Google Search API into client’s Site Audits.
I had been doing this because Search Results at Google and Bing have started showing off information about businesses and sites that includes knowledge panel information and richer snippets. I thought it made sense to capture information that Google might be showing off that represented sites and business entities at those sites and provide some recommendations that might help improve how those looked at what kind of information they contained. The presentation is:
Knowledge Panels, Rich Snippets and Semantic Markup from Bill SlawskiKnowledge panels may be enhanced because of a verified Google MyBusiness listing, a Wikipedia Entry, a Freebase Entry (now terminated by Google), and a Wikidata Entry. This Google Developers page provides more details:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/enhance-site
Adding Markup vocabulary on your site can result in knowledge panels showing links to social profiles for a business, as described here:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/social-profile-links
Knowledge panels based upon a Google MyBusiness listing can show off Reviews that people have submitted to Google+ for a site, “Reviews from the Web” from sources such as Facebook, Tripadvisor, Consumer Affairs, and others; and may also show off critical reviews. In addition, if there are enough reviews from Google+, knowledge panels may also show off sentiment-rich snippets from those reviews as well.
Search results are a lot more colorful and richer these days, and Knowing how to make your business and site stand out may bring you more traffic and customers as you are represented better in search results.