word is supposed to tell the browser software that it's an italic word.  Semantic Web standards are just the same, only we put tags into the markup that only make sense to software.  We're all using this already -- the 'meta' tags at the top of just about every webpage around are examples that help describe what is on that page.   It's just taking that concept further, and describing individual pieces of content on the page, and tagging those as having a specific purpose. Like tagging a byline 'By Bruce Chapman' as being of type 'author' from a specific taxonomy.  Once you've done that, any software can make the correct deduction that the person tagged with 'author' was the one who wrote the page. And that's what Rich Snippets are -- Google terminology for integrating semantic markup in content back into search results.  It's how Google works out who is the Author, what the rating or price of a product is, and then inserts that information into the search results pages.  The full list of rich snippets for content is Reviews, People, Products, Recipes, Events and Music.  No doubt they will add more as time goes by.  Read about the full list on the Rich Snippets help topic . But for now, we're just going to concentrate on the Author profile. Getting your Author profile to show up in Google It's really easy to do this.   If you can post a Blog post, you can link up your Author picture.