Ready to geek it up a bit? Well, I’d like to introduce you- in true geektacular fashion- to something that folks like me have been excited about for awhile now- Microformats.
Microformats - Mmm, Mmm... Good
Microformats are simple codes that you can use to identify specific kinds of data, like people or events, in webpages. They make pages more descriptive to the computers that read, distribute, and extract information from them.
My interest was piqued about 3 years ago when I first heard about the concept. Bots would someday be extracting contact information, calendar dates, reviews, and more for plain old web pages. I began studying and trying to find examples in the wild.
As fate would have it, soon after reading Brian Suda‘s “Microformats” book, I had an opportunity to listen to renowned designer/developer Dan Cederholm. He shared a story of his implementation of micoformats with the well known wine site, cork’d.
I was sold.
We’ve incorporated microformats in almost every project undertaken in the course of the past two and a half years. We use them primarily with calendar listings, business contact details, and special case uses for geo-encoded data and reviews.
The reasons are threefold:
- To build in forward compatible code
- To make site content accessible and available for extraction by outside sources
- For inclusion/consideration by search algorithms
Developers dedicated to their craft should be well aware of microformats and their uses. However, I must admit that I’m disheartened by the number of “developers” that haven’t heard of microformats.
It’s an example of how dead-weight developers are holding back the development of flexible web technologies. They justify not using microformats by saying that there aren’t any applications supporting them.
That was never entirely true. A number of Firefox toolbars and Yahoo! Search Monkey were parsing microformats. Sure, not everything was looking at them, but hey, it has to start somewhere, right? You have to plant the seeds to reap the harvest.
My SEO and Microformats Roller Coaster Ride
While at SMX in San Jose a year and a half ago, I was fortunate to have a brief opportunity to speak with Google’s Matt Cutts and ask if Google had any plans to factor in microformats.
Matt indicated testing was being done. Matt’s comment, coupled with the roll-out of Yahoo! Search Monkey left me very encouraged, and left it at that. Awesome.
That encouragement was short lived. Several months after, Matt responded to Twitter question about the testing by saying, “It hasn’t proven useful to users”.
Ouch. It didn’t make sense. Me and a lot of other people kept using them anyway.
On May 12th, the game changed. Google started to display parsed data from microformats (beginning with contact information and reviews). And digital high-fives ensued! This is a significant development, and should usher in the widespread adoption of using microformats.
Three Simple Things You Can Do With Microformats
- You can use them in a hcalendar with your event listings. They’re easy to export to icalendar, Google calendar, and more.
- Use hcard to display your business contact information.
- Further leverage your testimonials by using hreview.
Implementation
When starting any new development project, ask that microformats implementation be included. It’s simple to do, so don’t worry about blowing your project budget.For existing sites, talk to your developer about beginning with your company address and hcard.
If you’re an online retailer, microformats stand to have a pretty big impact on you. I think ecommerce sites can really capitalize on microformats by collecting product reviews, and displaying them using the hreview format.
Microformats Stickers
With Google and Yahoo! Search Monkey both making some use of microformats, we’ve got to assume that more and more services will follow.
I’m very interested to hear about others’ methods and reasoning for implementing microformats. If you are too, leave a comment and tell us about how you’re using them.
Not only will you get to geek out with me, but I’ll gladly send you a couple sheets of our recently printed Moo microformats stickers!