Structured data, rich snippets, microformats, opengraph etc is the technique of presenting data in a way that Google can pull information and display extra info in it's search results. eg: Below is a Google search of "free CV". The top 2 results are using structured data.
I've been a big fan of it for a long time, and it works.
But it's good to get another viewpoint on it, and there is a very interesting article on structured data and the future, which even pinpoints Googles potential downfall, and if we carry on using structured data, makes it easier for a start up that can manipulate and read this data, to give us the next major search engine!
As I'm finding out, content scrapers are already using this to their advantage, so maybe structured data is not the way forward?
It's a long one, but if this is something that interests you or you want to learn about, it's worth reading.
Structured Data Markup Was Inevitable, But Is It An Admission Of Failure?
