Structured data is a hot topic in search engine optimization right now. If you hang around the water cooler at SEO Inc. you’ll see people up in arms about the implications for CTR, more traffic and overall user experience regarding this new SEO element. Only adding to this flurry of exacerbated excitement, Google recently released the Google Data Highlighter Tool. And let me tell you, this thing is pretty impressive.
Watch a Video on the New Google Data Highlighter Tool
Below you will find a new video released by Google showing how the highlighter tool works.
As you can see, the Google Data Highlighter Tool allows you to apply structured data to your page, without ever having to touch your code. If you are new to structured data you can learn more here. But briefly, by adding structured data, or in this case telling Google what parts of your site you would like marked up with structured data, you can display different content in search results. Most commonly, websites use structured data to display reviews, events, music and recipes.
Previously, the only way to add structured data to your website was by adding this markup language to your HTML. Now, the data highlighter is an alternative. It is a point and click tool that tells Google how to interpret your pages, without modifying the pages themselves.
As shown in the video, just input the URL you would like to add data to. Next, highlight and label the important fields.
Google will show you how they are interpreting the pages on the right hand side. Furthermore, Google will also reveal similar pages that you can check and confirm if they should also have structured data applied to them. When you are done just hit publish and Google will apply these changes to your entire site.
You can access the new tool here: www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
Have questions or comments about the new Google Data Highlighter Tool? Let us know!
