Attention webmasters, you now need to make sure that your site is Rich Card friendly so that you can gain more Google search referrals. Google has already launched Rich Cards for two search categories, recipes and movies. More content topics will be added over time.
Rich Cards are Google’s latest version of its enhanced mobile friendly search results that from a site owners point of view can lead to more visitors and business if you follow the Rich Card protocol. Rich cards are a new search result format building on the concept of rich snippets, using schema.org structured markup to display content in a more engaging and visual format. Google believes that this approach provides the mobile Google searcher a better user experience.
Below is an example of the evolution of mobile search queries with rich cards displaying carousels where search results scroll horizontally. Carousels can contain cards all from the same site or from multiple sites.
As Google says:
“For site owners, this is a new opportunity to stand out in Search results and attract more targeted users to your page. For example, if you have a recipe site, you can build a richer preview of your content with a prominent image for each dish. This visual format helps users find what they want right away, so you’re getting users who specifically want that especially delicious cookie recipe you have.”
For developers, Google offers documentation on how to implement Rich Card’s for your site and also created a gallery with a list of various business verticals that demonstrate how various kinds of structured data can produce rich results in Google Search.