Google has added new search developer documentation for structured data carousels (beta). The new documentation can be found here and is under the “early adopters program.” This structured data is for a new carousel rich result that’s in beta, “which is a list-like rich result that people can scroll horizontally to see more entities from a given site (also known as a host carousel),” Google wrote.
Where it works. This new carousel beta is generally for hotels, restaurants, vacation rents, products, and events. Each tile in the carousel may have information from your site about the price, rating, and images for entities on the page.
What it looks like. Here is an illustration of what this looks like within Google Search:
Guidelines. The generic Google guidelines apply here but in addition, with this specific carousel, Google added these additional guidelines:
- Use of generic types is allowed. However, to use recommended properties, you must use the respective types. For example, to use
amenityFeature, use theLodgingBusinesstype. - Use of additional or extra fields is allowed, but may not appear in the rich result.
You can learn more about the technical implementations and guidelines, including code examples and troubleshooting help over here.
Why we care. If you have a local business or product or event website that can make use of this beta carousel, you might want to give it a try. Rich results often can help get your website more visibility in search and a higher click through rate to your website.
But you need to implement the structured data and track the results to see if it is worthwhile.
