Since Google released rich snippets, spammers have been trying to spam the rich snippets. Over the years, as far back as 2012, Google has been asking you to report these attempts to them. And yes, Google does take action on rich snippet spam.That being said, things still get through because it isn't always easy to catch.John Mueller of Google posted one example of a popular structured data error that he sees a lot that does get caught by Google:Yea, specifically using the wrong markup on the wrong type of page. Sometimes this is done in error and sometimes not.Former Google spam fighter Murat Yatagan then followed up with his disappointment in how Google handles much of this. He called out Google for not doing enough about this type of spam:He isn't happy and he use to be a spam fighter at Google, so he knows what is involved internally at Google to deal with these.Forum discussion at Twitter. … [Read more...] about Google: Spammy Structured Data Markup Still An Issue
Structured data markup
Structured Data Markup Was Inevitable, But Is It An Admission Of Failure?
The movement toward structured data markup (i.e., increasing use of standards like Open Graph, Schema.org, RDFa, etc.) has bothered me for awhile, but I could not exactly put my finger on the issues. A few weeks ago at SMX East, there were some great presentations on these topics, and I finally realized that I have many major reservations about the proliferation and use of these standards, on many levels (mostly from a publisher perspective; for end-users they are generally a very positive development). What Are These Standards? They sound complicated, but in layman’s terms, I would say: think of them as being similar to additional meta-tags on a page, similar to a meta-description or meta-keywords, but often in XML format, which convey certain structured information about various objects. Like meta-tags, these are intended to be machine-readable, but not necessarily presentable to humans in a browser. Much of the rich information showing up in search engine results (such as … [Read more...] about Structured Data Markup Was Inevitable, But Is It An Admission Of Failure?
Enhancing Results With Structured Data & Markup
When you think about the job the search engines have to do it’s pretty daunting. Given a collection of mostly wildly unstructured data from an endless number of sources, Bing, Google and the others have to somehow make sense of all that information and then give it back to us on demand in a way we’ll understand. Fortunately, web masters have more tools than ever to present that data, and the search engines are getting smarter about how they accept it. Using structured data and markup including RDFa, schema, hCard, Open Graph, and Twitter Cards. In my personal experience, hCard and those schema relative to location were the first we saw in the wild, followed shortly by reviews — product, business and media. With the hCard microformat we were able to mark up Name, Address, Phone Number and other entity level data important for local search. In the Super Session: Enhancing Search Results With Structured Data & Markup, Disney Interactive’s Jeff Preston, Jay … [Read more...] about Enhancing Results With Structured Data & Markup
What’s new with markup & structured data
Structured data makes certain types of web content highly accessible and understandable by search engines and other third-party programs. Because the data on the page is tagged with standardized identifying code, it’s far easier to process and interpret than a regular webpage. For that reason, people refer to this type of data as “Linked Data” (similar to the way that the World Wide Web links billions of documents together). At June’s SMX Advanced, Aaron Bradley did an awesome job in his presentation, “What’s New With Structured Data Markup?,” providing a detailed update of what’s going on in this area. If you’re interested in a really detailed timeline of all the major happenings in the world of structured data markup, you can get access to that here. The overview In the SEO world, the most common form of structured data we speak about is Schema.org. This is because it’s a standard that was developed by and for search … [Read more...] about What’s new with markup & structured data
How to use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper
With the growth of schema markup and rich snippets, search marketers are becoming increasingly aware of how and why structured data matters to search. However, the sheer volume and variety of structured data can be overwhelming. A quick survey of the type hierarchy at schema.org reveals a list that is shockingly thorough. Where do you begin? How do you not miss something? That’s why I’d like to explain how to use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper What Does the Structured Data Markup Helper Do? Titles like “Structured Data Markup Helper” need a little explanation, so let me first explain a little bit about this tool before launching into a demonstration. I want you to see how and why the helper can be helpful. The Tool Explained Stated simply, the Structured Data Markup Helper is designed to help you implement structured data on your site. Structured data is information organized in vast online databases (e.g., freebase) that help to serve search … [Read more...] about How to use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper