Rich Snippets Gone Wrong
With SEO methods evolving, an approach to increasing CTR (click through rates) is to take advantage of Google's Rich Snippets.
Running an E-Commerce store (Magento or otherwise), it would be foolish not to take advantage of this offering, either by adding product or review information to your Google listings. Especially since most SEO's have reported that taking advantage of rich snippets can increase CTRs by up to as much as 30%.
Rich snippets gone wrong
But what happens if you mistakenly submit the wrong information in your mark-up? I was browsing the internet looking at different PDU's (we're setting up a few more racks this week, for our specialised Magento hosting). On my journey I came across Dell's website and happened to notice their hProduct markup - except it looked like something had gone drastically wrong.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:accessories.us.dell.com%20tripplite%20pdumv20hv
So I checked Dell's source code and they weren't doing anything wrong, their mark-up was correct; no misplaced decimal points, incorrect currency as verified by the Google Rich Snippets tool.
So what is going on
As far as I can tell - its not anything within the control of the retailer (Dell); its simply a bug in Google's output/understanding of rich snippets. So this does beg the question, are rich snippets going to help or hurt your CTRs. We're certainly not advocating against them - but it does raise an interesting point. Would dell see a lower CTR on the result through the display of an incorrect, higher price - versus not having any rich snippets displayed at all?
How can I implement rich snippets on my Magento store
Its a pretty straightforward practice to add them to your store, here are a few great links to give you a head start.