Cast your mind back to May 2009 (ah it was a simpler time, halcyon days, etc.) to when Google first announced its introduction of Rich Snippets to allow search listings to not just return page results but also pepper them with additional information.
Well Google has now announced some improvements to the way it handles its support for features such as Breadcrumbs and Events in SERP listings:
Rich Snippet Testing Tool Improvements
The testing tool will now provide more feedback to webmasters trying to jiggle their microdata into a working state. So Google suggests that if you had problems getting your snippets to be sufficiently rich in the past, you could try again now and hopefully receive more useful feedback on any errors.
Breadcrumbs
Google has been adding the useful Breadcrumbs links to the bottom of some sites ranking entries for a while now, but it has been all been reliant on Google actually spotting the hierarchical structure of your site. Now however Google has announced support for a Breadcrumbs markup format that will allow webmasters to unambiguously identify their sites structure.
Events
Arguably of less widespread appeal than the Breadcrumbs, but the ability to display upcoming events in the snippets is also useful (you can see an example part way down the page when searching for 'live music london'). Google has announced that they will now show additional information for single event listing as well – details can be found in Webmaster Central help.
More information can be found on the Webmaster Central Blog and in the Rich Snippets documentation in Webmaster Central help.
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