Standard and rich snippets in Google

You’ve probably seen non-standard website displays in search results featuring star ratings, tables, prices, emojis, and more, which often raises questions like—how do they do that, and how can I achieve the same? Yes, there’s some magic involved in crafting snippets to make them stand out. That’s what this article is all about: standard and rich snippets in Google search results. Let’s get started.

What is a snippet?

A snippet is a short display of a website in search results, consisting of the site’s URL, favicon, title, and description.

👉 The page title typically pulls from the "title" tag, limited to 70 characters. However, there are exceptions, as the title can sometimes be pulled from the company name or the <H1> tag.

👉 The favicon is pulled from the image set as the icon in the code, using this line:

<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico">

The favicon mostly appears in mobile search results.

👉 The page description typically pulls from the "description" tag, up to 155 characters long. Sometimes it is replaced by a text snippet from the website (often the first paragraph or a section with a keyword). The description highlights keywords in bold.

👉 The website URL shows the relevant page address. Additionally, breadcrumb navigation can be displayed using the “BreadcrumbList” schema.

This is what a standard snippet looks like:

But sometimes snippets include prices, star ratings, tables, extra links, and more. This is called a rich snippet, or a "rich result" in SEO jargon. This is usually achieved through structured data or specific manipulations on the website. Here’s what a rich snippet might look like:

What can be included in a rich snippet?

• ratings and rating stars;
• prices;
• lists and table data;
• additional links;
• question/answer format;
• images;
• emojis and special characters.

* This list will evolve as Google search results are dynamic.

Rating stars in snippets

Star ratings appear in snippets using two elements: a module that allows users to leave a rating on the page and structured data, specifically the AggregateRating schema, integrated into the page's code. There are no ready-made solutions since each CMS has its nuances. Star ratings can be displayed for products, product lists, or informational pages.

Prices in snippets

Prices are shown in snippets thanks to the Product schema with various parameters:

👉 price - the product price;

👉 sale_price - the sale price;

👉 lowPrice - the lowest price (for product lists);

👉 highPrice - the highest price (for product lists).

Here’s how it looks:

Lists and table data in snippets

Snippets often pull not just structured data, but also table data. If the content contains a table built using <table>, <thead>, <tr> and <td> tags, Google can extract up to four rows for display in the snippet. Here’s an example:

Additional links in snippets

Additional links may appear in snippets for the following reasons:

👉 The website is large and popular, with a structure that’s clear to search engines. Popular sections are then pulled into the snippet.

👉 Anchor links from the content (created using "#").

Unfortunately, you can only indirectly influence the appearance of additional links. Google’s algorithm decides whether to display them. There are no special tags for this.

Question/answer format in snippets

A great addition to snippets is a question/answer format, implemented through an FAQ section on the page and using the FAQpage schema.

Question/answer snippets can increase engagement, answer frequently asked questions, and provide price ranges or links to popular product categories. Here’s an example:

Images in snippets

Images may be pulled into snippets for several reasons:

👉 The presence of the "image" schema.

👉 Square-shaped images on the page, where the "alt" and "title" tags are filled with keywords.

While there’s no exact method to add images to snippets, studies show that it is done through one of these methods.

In some cases, snippets also display multiple images from a product category page. Here’s how that looks:

Emojis and special characters in snippets

Additionally, every snippet element—whether standard or rich—can be decorated with icons like emojis or special characters. These are Unicode symbols encoded in UTF-8 and inserted into the HTML. There are even Unicode symbol catalogs with various icons, each having its own HTML code. Most of them are inserted as graphical symbols.

Emojis are pictograms with emotions (smileys, thumbs up, hearts, etc.):

Special characters look like this in snippets:

These are all the current snippet manipulation options. We hope this material has been helpful to you because standing out in search results is valuable. We won’t speculate about CTR percentages - those stats are only available to Google developers, but in practice, we see that rich snippets are much more attractive than standard search results.