Any value to shoehorning less applicable rich snippets into a page?

[BrianAlpert78]

I've been wondering something about rich snippets for a while. I can plainly see how rich snippets and micro-data stuff can be super helpful for pages that feature things like event schedules, recipes, specific products with reviews, and articles written by influential authors. But is it worth trying to force micro-data into pages that don't readily lend themselves to the established rich snippet archetypes?

For example, say I was making a website for a carpet cleaning service. The company provides a service, rather than selling a tangible product, so there aren't individual items of which to tag pictures and reviews. The company doesn't hold any kind of events, so the scheduling stuff doesn't apply. The company doesn't necessarily present itself with any one person as the "face of the company", so there isn't anyone to tag as the "author" of the content. And obviously (I hope), people should not be eating/drinking carpet detergents, so recipes wouldn't work.

Given these restrictions, is it of any value to use any of the more generic micro-data structures like "thing" (http://schema.org/Thing) or "intangible" (http://schema.org/Intangible) to mark up stuff like "this is a picture of a carpet that we cleaned, but you can't actually buy from us"? Or are the rich snippets more of an "if your content fits with one of Google's promoted use cases, that's great, but otherwise don't bother" situations?

Thanks!

[julianhearn]

Be careful, very careful. Matt Cutts has already warned about possible future penalties for people abusing rich snippets.

[Nick_Ker]

Yeah.... it sounds like a "don't bother" situation, with these possible exceptions:

Testimonials - You can use aggregate review markup your testimonials page, just make sure the reviews are all legit and verifiable. Not sure if or how Google might verify these, and it seems prone to gaming it

Does the company provide specific service packages like "3 Rooms for $X.00"? That may work as an "Offer" even though it is not a tangible product. http://schema.org/Offer

[gfiedel]

Hi,

Jumping in with an additional, related  question-

-what do you think about rich snippets for location and/or phone number?

Thanks!

[ShaMenz]

Those rich snippets abuse penalties are already here.

Sha

[BrianAlpert78]

The "offer" example was more what I was getting at. There are schemas for things like offers, local business, and certain kinds of services, but my understanding of rich snippets is that their main value is to display a "fancier" Google search result. But since Google has so far only implemented micro-data enhanced listings for certain types of information (like store hours, event dates, and recipe ingredients), is there any other reason to mark up company details on a page that are 100% accurate and verifiable, but not necessarily the kind of thing that would be displayed on a search listing (such as a local business's founding date)?

[BrianAlpert78]

Obviously you'll want to take this with a grain of salt (because I don't have any real, definitive knowledge about this), but I would guess that address and phone number information would be useful (or at least not harmful). If nothing else, it might help standardize the contact information that various directory scrapers get from a website, so you won't have your fax number listed as your phone number.

[Nick_Ker]

If it isn't going to be so much work that it will wreck the budget or take someone off of something more urgent, I would use schema markup on anything on which it can be legitimately used - regardless of whether or not Google is currently showing that particular itemtype. Google currently only uses some of them, but will probably add more later.

Other sites are starting to use the markup for things like Offers, too. Pinterest just announced that they are now going to have "rich pins", for example.

So you can add the markup now and be a little ahead of the game, or wait until you need to catch up.