Rich snippets for website structure

Question

I've recently discovered rich snippets and their usage to make a search motor understand the type of content such as addresses, people,...

I have a website in which for each page I replicate the menu (A simple menu with links to all the pages ~20 of the website) Since the first element in the body is the menu, Google makes the same search preview for all the pages: the menu and not the actual content of the page.

So I would like to know if there is a way to tell the search motor the structure of the page: for instance that some elements are navigation elements, some are content, some are copyright... Describing the "human" structure of the page.

What I understood is that rich snippets are intended to describe "real life" information, and what I am searching would be something similar but to describe the structure.

I hope that make sens.

Sorry for my english.

Answer 1

So I would like to know if there is a way to tell the search motor the structure of the page: for instance that some elements are navigation elements, some are content, some are copyright... Describing the "human" structure of the page.

Well, this is what HTML elements are used for. Some use the term "semantic markup/HTML" for this. Of course this has its limits, as not every kind of structure/content type can be described.

Solutions for your example:

• For navigation, there is the nav element.
• The main content of a page can be automatically found thanks to sections and the outline algorithm (in HTML 5.1 there is also the main element).
• The copyright info should be given in the small element, probably in a footer element. If it's a link to a license, you should use the license link type.

In general, you should follow these steps (from structure to content):

1. use appropriate HTML elements, as detailed as possible
2. use defined/registered link types (for link, a and area elements)
3. use Microformats (class attribute values for all elements)
4. use defined/registered meta tags (in meta elements)
5. use RDFa (Lite) and/or Microdata (new attributes for all elements)

WAI-ARIA can give additional info about your structure intended for accessibility.

Answer 2

This might be what you're looking for:

<meta name="description" content="A description of the page" />

This tag provides a short description of the page. In some situations this description is used as a part of the snippet shown in the search results. Google will take that string and will show it in the search results