If someone told you that there was a quick and easy way that many of you could improve your SERP CTR for minimal effort, you'd all stop in your tracks and give them full attention. Yet, Schema.org and rich snippets are still horribly under-utilized.
Since Google (and Bing!) officially introduced schema.org in June, it’s fair to say motivation to implement it has been mixed. However since its introduction Schema.org has already evolved a lot, adding a lot of new stuff that people haven’t paid attention to. Here I try to persuade you there are few downsides and plenty of upsides.
Myth: Schema.org markup doesn’t get rich snippets!
A common objection I hear to people not using Schema is that there’s no point because Google don’t use it for rich snippets. WRONG!
This was true, but is no longer; lots of websites in different markets have taken a leap of faith and are seeing the benefits in the form of rich snippets.
Examples of Schema.org Rich Snippets Showing in Google
The following are all examples of websites that are currently using the Schema.org vocabulary:
E-Commerce
Image Source | See The Example Page
TV Series
Image Source | See The Example Page
Movies
Image Source | See The Example Page
Events
Image Source | See The Example Page
Recipe
Image Source | See Example Page
As you can see Schema.org is definitely being used by Google.
Schema.org is not a language.
Schema.org is a Microdata vocabulary; not a language in and of itself. Let me explain the difference, as there is still a lot of confusion in the SEO community.
There are various languages that do the job we're discussing:
- Microformats
- Microdata
- RDFa
When marking up any content on a page for rich snippets or similar machine readable reasons, the method of doing so is always a mix between one of these and a vocabulary. See the example below of using Microdata with the schema.org vocabulary.
Of the language and vocabulary above, it’s the vocabulary part that all the search engines have agreed to standardize with schema.org.
When Google originally announce that they were going to support the Schema.org vocabulary, they also dropped the bombshell that they supported only Microdata.
They also said that although they would continue to support the existing rich snippets markup, you should avoid mixing the formats together as it can confuse their parsers.
The fact that you couldn’t mix Schema.org and microformats or RDFa annoyed a lot of people and as @TomAnthonySEO pointed out in his HTML5 blog post, Kavi Goel from Google later said this was a mistake and they are fixing it. You can read the discussion here
BREAKING NEWS: 2 days ago a pretty big announcement was made on the Schema.org blog. There are plans in the pipeline for the Schema.org vocabulary to be used with the RDFa language; with support for using other vocabularies on the same page.
5 underused Schema.org applications
I personally believe that Schema.org is the future and if you’ve not already done so, you should be implementing it right now. Regardless of what type of website you have, there are always ways you can use Schema.org, even if it’s simply defining an article and the publish date.
That being said, there are cases where I think you can gain even more by implementing it, here are my top 5 examples of ways I think Schema.org should be getting used.
Events.
The event schema lets you get really specific about what type of event you are describing. Right now you can specify an event as any of the items shown in the image below.
With the recent QDF update, it’s important that you give Google as much information as possible. Events by their very nature are obviously time sensitive so using schema.org to enforce event details is obviously a good idea.
The events schema is a pretty comprehensive vocabulary, you are able to markup things like; attendees, duration, performers, location and the start and end date. For more information see the events page: https://schema.org/Event.
Jobs
I don’t think I can describe how amazing this is. The jobs markup is a recent addition to the schema.org vocabulary and was announced last week on the schema blog. Even more amazing is what was announced on the Google blog today. Google have just launched a custom search engine that specifically looks for Schema.org job markup. The custom search engine is used to find veteran-committed job openings. You can read the blog post here.
I would love to see search related queries returning results like that in the example below.
Reputation Management
This isn’t ground breaking so I’ll make it quick. Make use of the Person Schema to make the best page online about the person in question. Not only can you mark up the obvious things like name and age, you can use the tiny details such as what university they went to (alumniOf), what awards they have won (awards), where they work (worksFor), who their colleagues are (colleagues) and even who their family are (parents, siblings, spouse, relatedTo). This is an easy way to make a super targeted page around a single person. I tried this on my own blog and marked up as much as I could. (Disclaimer: I’ve not got round to actually writing a blog post yet but you can see my about Craig page that I used as a schema test. When you put this page into the Google rich snippets tool, look how much information they are now able to extract.
That is an amazing amount of information and is now obviously an awesome result to Display when some one searches my name. This is how it would look in the SERPS as well.
News Sites
The recent QDF update reinforces how committed Google are to displaying fresh content where appropriate. Schema has now extended the vocabulary to include a section specifically for the news industry. This now allows you to reference a particular page or column in the physical paper edition if appropriate. The image below shows the recent additions.
News sites should be using this to markup to tell the search engines what their content is about and when it was published.
E-commerce
I can’t believe how many e-commerce websites I see without any markup at all. People spend so much time trying to rank higher and forget to get the low hanging fruit. Rich snippets are an amazing way to increase click through rates by drawing attention to your listing. The Ebay example shows how much the stars help make the listing stand out.
Wrap up
I hope I’ve managed to convince you that Schema.org is worth implementing right now.
There are already the benefits of rich snippets to be had but this isn’t just about rich snippets; it’s about creating content that machines can understand and reference. There are already services that try to make use of this kind of information such as Silk, Apples Siri and potentially Wiredoo. Ensuring that you are ahead of your competitors can only be a good thing.
For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Craig Bradford and I work at Distilled as an SEO consultant. If you have any questions please leave comments or ask me on twitter @CraigBradford
Still not supported by Wordpress sadly enough. The default editor removes all microdata code when switching to visual view or when auto saved. Plugins aren't very practical either. Open Graph has better success to an extent for Facebook, but google uses it sometimes especially for +1 info.
This is a bit of a pain however if you create the page in an external editor, you can then just copy and paste into wordpress, this cuts out the auto saving problem. My personal site that I used as an example is Wordpress and it hasn't stripped it out.
Is schema.org css driven or do I have to do all this manually?
Just disable the visual editor in wordpress, we did it on our site! All of my folks are comfortable with html and css so we do not really need it. Also, I think there is plugin that prevent WP from removing markup.
Craig, have you found or used an example to share for proper Schema AboutPage?
I've had similar problems with adding textarea divs (you know, for things like embed codes and whatnot). It will work if you publish it right after editing the HTML without switching to the Visual portion, and I'd imagine that it's the same with microdata markup.
Just be sure you've got it right before you publish. ;)
Melissa posted an article about a Microdata plugin for Wordpress. Although I haven't tried it yet, it looks super simple. Let me know if this helps.
Great article Craig!
Dope.
Fantastic!! This is just what WordPress needs.
WP has a lot of issues with stuff like that, but I've found that disabling the visual editor and working in HTML only helps. It keeps all of your scripts and markuip in place. You can disable from the admin dashboard.
I am sure wordpress plugins are currently in development to allow for item type associations. Once this has been automated we should see WP webmasters incorporate these types of data classifications into their process.
What's ironic is that when Yahoo! started out as a directory we were all about classification, then Google's whole point was to find exactly what you're searching for without these assignments and categorizatoins. Now we have come full circle again.
I have no doubt this will become important but it will take some time. Until then, link build!
Call me skeptical, but I believe the schema implementation is a double edged sword. Just think about how easy it is for any of the search engines to directly parse the information a searcher is after, the way Google shows the "best guess" results. If the searcher gets the information they want from Google instantly, they won't be clicking on any search results anymore.
That is surely a risk, but I think it is a myopic way to look at Schema.
For instance, if I tag an hotel so that I can expose in the SERPS the most interesting infos about it (reviews, kind of hotel, best price and address), I am practically creating an Adwords kind of description in the organic snippet... Result, I give more reasons to the users to click on my link than to others, that maybe has just title and a generic meta description.
I agree, we implemented customer review microdata on an client´s accommodation site, and once the rich snippets started showing, got a substantial jump in CTR.
Same story with another site with event AND reviews, it gives you a big fat listing in the serps that attracts much more attention than the competition.
Hi Bob, you make a great point and this is something that I was speaking about with Tom this weekend. I completely agree and thats what I was getting at with the example of Silk. Although there is the potential for this to happen, markup is here to stay and it's in our interest to make the most of it. Thanks for your comment.
Bobjones, if I’m in a rush and want to find contact information for some person, wouldn’t it be better if I could get the phone number directly in the Google SERP instead of waiting for the website to load and having to scan the page to find the phone number?
Not having anything better to compare search engines to its hard to imagine how much better they could be. We see it as part of life that when we do a search we will usually have to click through 4-5 sites before we find what we really are looking for. If we get there in just one click we act as if we have won the lottery.
Schema.org is likely to increase Click through rates from search engines (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6U4LhjlIqI) as Ben has witnessed, although it might not increase page views.
But Schema.org is more than just SEO. As we make data available using semantics and structured data, new improved mashups, services, browsers, tools etc. will evolve which will benefit us all. Semantics and structured data have come to stay and Schema.org will improve search experience and in general the Web as a whole.
So are you going to sit on the fence while others innovate and create a global ecosystem of data?
Deciding not to provide structured data because you don’t want to share your data is the mentality of yesterday (Web 1.0). It’s like trying to lure kids with candy (to enter their website to get more ad impressions).
In what cases do you read information from Google SERPs without clicking on the links?I find that to be rare. For products I will always go to the site to read product details and to read reviews. For events I’ll always go to the site to see whose attending and to get the agenda. For general articles and about-pages the info available in the SERP is not long enough to be useful. If I want to check the weather I can get the weather directly in the SERPs but I want to get the forecast details by hour. For places I want to view full size images. For recipes I’ll go to the site to get detailed instructions and to read comments. For news you don't really get todays headlines in the SERP.
The only time I search and get the info I’m looking for right off the SERP is when I search for a term/concept I need to know what means (English is not my native language). Other cases like share info from stock tickers, currency, sport scores, calculations etc. are really special cases and not really how I use the web for the most part.
So what’s more important? Providing a better user experience for web users or have people click around on websites trying to find what he or she really was looking for so your client can make a few more bucks on advertising?
Other aspects here: https://www.webnodes.com/deciding-to-use-schema-org
I'm all for a better web experience, but search engines are not the web. Google is not the web. They're the biggest commercial content scraper in the world. Schema.org will only make their scraping easier, and they will eventually not need anyones website anymore to provide information. Hooray for Google, but the rest of us can suck it.
In an ideal world, we'd all benefit from changes like this, but the fact is that Google is a multi-billion dollar company, and all their shareholders are after is more money. (while making the world a better place)
The way this is going, Google is quickly getting a monopoly on the net, and with all the recent moves towards placing a paid wall around the Google garden, such as the SSL default search, where only paying adwords users can see referrer keywords, I think the net is headed towards just another "governed" place, where you get to see what someone else wants you to see.
Google does a great job of dangling carrots in front of us, so that we aid them in shaping the net they need it to be.
And hey, I don't know about you, but since me nor my clients are getting paid by Google for the work we do, I would like to get people clicking on my sites and generating income. I do have mouths to feed and bills to pay.
Bob, in your original post you said: "If the searcher gets the information they want from Google instantly, they won't be clicking on any search results anymore."
As described in my previous post, I don't really see instant search results or instant preview as a threat.
For all the sites I have worked on we provide services or content that is not visible or usable in the instant result/preview.
Schema.org seem to increase SERP CTR so if you would rather have people just stumbling into your site and leaving just as fast over relevant new visitors who want to engage with you then go ahead drop structured data.
Search engines will help me avoid that unnecessary visit to your site if your content is not what I’m looking for. For your client this might be a bad thing but for the rest of the world this is a good thing. I think it’s selfish to not help searchers find the thing they are looking for just so you can earn a few bucks on ad impressions.
Transparency and data sharing is usually also a good thing. Schema.org will support that. Another example of benefits of Schema.org is that the data provided as structured data can be used to create better tools for the disabled. Once again Schema.org is good for everyone.
Ok, so are you OK with Google grabbing the information a searcher was looking for from a site, display their own Adwords (earning a few bucks from ads) on the serp, and effectively refusing the site where they are parsing the data from, to get a clickthrough? Because that is exactly where it is headed. Google Adwords doesn't have to share the ad revenue with the publisher anymore, for the same ads that are showing for the same search query.
You're not willing to let small time publisher make a few bucks on ad impressions, while it is OK for Google to make nearly ten billion dollars revenue per quarter? They're not doing it for free either you know, even though they make it seem like they do. https://investor.google.com/earnings/2011/Q3_google_earnings.html
I can understand where you're coming from, by saying that it is selfish not to help searchers to find the thing they're looking for, but if you took away people's incentive to earn a living online with content, because Google would hijack it, I think you'd see content dry up rather fast. It would kill the free Internet as we know it.
Bob, I don't mind Google or any other search engine displaying instant result snippets in the SERP.
For the kind of sites I'm developing people will go to the site anyway because there is more value on the site.
If someone is in a rush and can get the info they need from the SERP instant result then fine. I'm glad that I could help out. But the majority of users are going to visit the page anyway because there are more additional content and more value in going to the site. If you have good content on your site you’ll get traffic and you will earn money from your ads. If your tactic is to get anyone to your site including people who have no business there, then you’re basically a spam site as I see it.
I've looked through types at Schema.org such as Book, Movie, MusicRecording, Recipe, TVSeries, Event, Organization, Person, Place, LocalBusiness, Restaurant, Product, Offer etc. and I can't really see any cases where it is likely that using Schema.org will reduce click through.
If one is searching for a MusicRecording you might not get a click through if the instant result show that the rating is bad, but then no one else gets the click anyway.
So once others have implemented Schema.org for similar content, these other sites are going to get the click through because more visual SERP rich snippets have shown to generate more traffic.
By enabling structured data (similar to Schema.org) Bestbuy got 30% more traffic from search engines. https://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_best_buy_is_using_the_semantic_web.php
Can you give examples of content you think would result in fewer click through with Schema.org and argument for why?
The point that Bob is making is that if it remains snippets on SERPs that's fine, but by structuring data this way we give Google the ability and opportunity to take all of our data and present it on their page, and get the money from the search terms and impressions. So yes your content may not get the click through and maybe no one else will, but Google still does.
That's the danger Bob is warning us about here. If you have data on your site that you think will act as an incentive for people to click through, then you probably don't structure it, so Google can't display it. If you do, Google could at any time decide to just parse it out and display it on their page.
So right now it is improving CTR and is great for snippets, but for this benefit to continue we have to rely on the benevolence of Google to do the right thing.
Bob is worried that one day they won't and they won't limit this to snippets but instead take the entire content of a page and display it as they see fit. I think this is a legitimate concern that needs to be addressed.
"I think it’s selfish to not help searchers find the thing they are looking for just so you can earn a few bucks on ad impressions. "
That is demeaning to the definition of a business, which must make money to survive.
Besides you are basically asking that I give to Google the few bucks I still make.
There is an eye tracking study that was done by the folks at dynamical.biz in 2010 that highlights the lift in CTR from rich snippets and another more recent one from Search Engine Land titled "Eye-Tracking In Google Maps: Study Shows Value Of No. 1 Ranking & Social Content" that also provides insight into increased attention for enriched listings.
They are both great resources worth checking out and may help to clarify the Schema.org's value to searchers and websites.
Hi, I meant to comment yesterday after my few twitter comments and I guess I will be the diverging opinion.
There are two statements you made that I have a problem with:
A) Rich Snippets not appearing is a myth: not.
First of all, I like SEO myths destruction like every other guy. I have been in SEO for the past 16 years and my approach is very academic, acting on experiments and the scientific method to find out the facts rather than the fiction behind SEO theories. So I like when we have clear-cut advances and myths that disappear.
Unfortunately, Rich Snippets not appearing is a reality, not a myth. I believe you have jumped the gun by a few years.
Let's look at the facts, shall we.
1) Brands get rich snippets. (So it's not just about the code being there or not.)I think it needs to propagate way lower down the food chain for this to work. But that's just a personal opinion.
2) High-value SEO optimized sites get snippets (Mostly brands.)We need to reverse engineer the criteria if there are some purely algorithmic quality determinations that trigger the rich snippets. Right now, the fact is, it's a manual trigger on Google side. (For those reading this who don't know, they have a form where you have to tell them that you have the schema code.) Do you know of any other SEO optimization that works like that? Are we back to the Yahoo! days where you have to make an application?
3) Snippets are at best a US experiment. For example, Canadian brands have a hard time getting them. This creates all kind of competitive issues. Yelp who is activated(and globally) have an unfair competitive advantage on CTR, all over the world where their competitors, some who had micro formats for over one year before they made the switch to schemas, and then, still are totally ignored by Google. Rich snippets need to work equally on a global scale.
4) Transparency. Is there a tool in webmaster tools to display Google's point of view around your schemas? What do you need to do from a quality standpoint so that they activate the snippets? This needs a lot of improvement, right now it seems highly political from the outside who gets them, or maybe it's not but criteria need to be precise and communicated.
5) Trackability. There's certainly experimental ways to track clicks on snippets but the echo-system is not mature by a long shot. We need serious trackability means for the schemas echosystem to work.
6) What about time between implementation of the code and activation? Let's say I have a very high quality side, a brand, perfect coding, how long will it take for snippets to be activated? By my experience from 1 months to 6 months. It needs to work like a title tag(seamlessly, at index time) for this ecosystem to work.
B) Schema is not just about the rich snippets: It is.
Your statement:
"Understanding that Schema.org is not just about rich snippets, it's about giving the search engines as many tools as possible to understand your content and see it as being a relevant result for the keywords you are targeting. "
Did you ever sold that to a client?Do you realize how far stretched this proposition is?Do you have any empirical, scientifically proven results to share with us that confirm your theory that this will provide any ROI at all? (After all, we SEOs should only be acting to provide business results to our clients.
In my humble opinion, it is very hard (read impossible) to make the case that schemas.org ROI is anything but, the boost in CTR and branding from the rich snippets.
I hope like you that this will change and that schemas will create all kinds of new innovations, because of the "improved understanding of your content by the search engine", but this is a philosophical goal that some clients will buy for branding reason(Branding argument: our SEOs are trying to improve the web, therefore we are a good web citizen etc.), not for ROI reasons. The cost of deployment of Schemas is high enough in most organizations to make it a requirement that they get rich snippets to justify the investment.
Just on your point B... Looking beyond rich snippets for a moment, I just wanted to point you to what else Google is doing with Schema markup - hopefully this might provide inspiration :)
https://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_creates_job_search_engine_for_us_military_v.php
"Google has teamed up with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to provide a customized job search engine for returning military veterans on the National Resource Directory (NRD) website. Starting today, veterans can use the site to search over 500,000 job openings nationwide. The site uses Google's custom search engine technology, looking for Schema.org's JobPosting markup across job listing sites to identify jobs committed to veterans.
Employers only have to add the JobPosting markup to their site to be crawled and listed in the NRD. Supporting organizations can also add the search box widget to their websites."
Sorry to say but I'm not with you on your comment: "(After all, we SEOs should only be acting to provide business results to our clients." I respectfully disagree - I recommend usability changes which have no immediate business results for clients, but can dramatically improve user happiness - causing them to become advocates, use the site more often etc.. That is even harder to measure. I completely understand your point on ROI, and agree with you - however sometimes it's not only about investing time and effort for immediate returns, but also about investing in the future.
" I respectfully disagree - I recommend usability changes which have no immediate business results for clients, but can dramatically improve user happiness - causing them to become advocates, use the site more often etc.."
What are you disagreeing with exactly in this statement? "Business Results" is a very large concept that applies differently for each type of clients. Would you sell the organization of the Web to large corporations like Microsoft: Absolutely. Would you sell it to a blogger who is strapped on time and ressources? No.
Usability improvements are easy to track in terms of value and ROI. I do the same. I would include that in providing business results in the form of higher conversion and social media engagement.
"However sometimes it's not only about investing time and effort for immediate returns, but also about investing in the future."
I agree, but again this doesn't apply to every clients by a long shot. The street corner restaurant wants to see more people coming in their place and spend their money on food & wine. I'm often faced with the SEO who come in this in this situation and talk about the very elusive "organization of the web", that's what I find a bit dreamy and long term, bad for all of us. The organization of the web is a theme currently reserved for 1-5% of the top clients. (Ok maybe 10-15% in the US) Luckily I get to work on a few of these top clients where I can be experimental and forward looking as much as possible, because that's the competitive landscape at that level.
Hi FP Marcil , First things first, thanks for reading the post and taking the time to leave an amazing comment. Here are my responses.
On point A:“Unfortunately, Rich Snippets not appearing is a reality, not a myth.”
I’ve given more than enough examples to show that Schema.org rich snippets do show up therefore to say I’ve jumped the gun a few years is completely false, they do show end of story.
I will however accept that it’s not a black and white scenario and it’s not as simple as just adding the code, but then again that was never the point I was making.
Now looking at your facts:
1) Brands get rich snippet- I would agree that the examples I’ve used are definitely brands but this is standard procedure for Google. They try things out on big brands first to get more attention and then roll it out to a wider audience. I don’t know how many times I need to say this; adding markup of any kind is not just for rich snippets! I’ll get to that in a minute though.
2) “Do you know of any other SEO optimization that works like that?” Yes; rel=author
3) “Snippets are at best a US experiment” Almost all changes Google make start in the US and then roll out. Again, this is standard for Google .There are however other examples internationally, look at Google.de If you search for "antivir" you will see another example https://www.google.de/search?q=antivir
4) When are Google ever transparent?! While Google are much better than they used to be, they are definitely not transparent and it’s not in their best interest to be transparent. It’s your job as an SEO to be one step ahead.
5) I agree trackability would be nice. However, with the referral encryption stuff, Google seem to be moving in the other direction. Just because I can’t track the extra clicks I’m getting it doesn’t mean they’re not valuable.
6) How long will it take for snippets to be activated? I have no idea but if people didn’t look any further than 6 months ahead my job would be a hell of a lot easier.
I agree that an instant reward would be great…but then if it was easy everyone would be doing it.
Ok part B
“Schema is not just about the rich snippets: It is.”
See this quote: “Tim Berners-Lee calls the resulting network of Linked Data the Giant Global Graph, in contrast to the HTML-based World Wide Web. Berners-Lee posits that if past was document sharing, the future is data sharing. His answer to the question of "how" provides three points of instruction. One, a URL should point to the data. Two, anyone accessing the URL should get data back. Three, relationships in the data should point to additional URLs with data.” Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web“
Do you have any empirical, scientifically proven results to share with us that confirm your theory that this will provide any ROI at all?”
I have data; but not that I can share, sorry.
Some final points (In general not just in response to this comment)
1 – Whether people like it or not, markup of some kind is here to stay. Sure we can all moan that it’s unfair, Google only want it for their benefit, they will eventually remove the need for websites etc. The bottom line is search engines are here to serve users, not webmasters.
As other people have said; Google want to make money. Adding markup, displaying rich snippets and in some cases, removing the need for external websites, whether we like it or not, sometimes provides a better service. We already see this with searches like “Define” and “Convert”, I don’t need to visit the page to get the information I need, and from a user point of view this is awesome. Happy searchers = more money.
Whether it’s Google, Bing or some other search engine in the future; what’s best for users will happen. Google never take decisions lightly, they certainly don’t get into bed with Bing often either. So the fact they have went to all this trouble to publicly announce it, educate people on it, build services around it, and finally start displaying rich snippets form it is a clear sign that it’s here to stay.
Innovate or die, ideally like I said, get ahead of the curve and start implementing it now.
P.S Did I mention Bing also show Schema.org rich snippets? :P
Thanks again for all the comments.
> P.S Did I mention Bing also show Schema.org rich snippets?
From https://blog.schema.org/ :
'On June 2nd we announced a collaboration between Bing, Google and Yahoo to create and support a standard set of schemas for structured data markup on web pages. Although our companies compete in many ways, it was evident to us that collaboration in this space would be good for each search engine individually and for the industry as a whole.'
Google aren't always the first either - Bing brought out their recipe search tool (based on microformats) over a year before Google did.
1) "I’ve given more than enough examples to show that Schema.org rich snippets do show up therefore to say I’ve jumped the gun a few years is completely false, they do show end of story. "
I think you fail to understand the problem. SEOs around the world have coded schemas((microdata in RDFa, microformat before that) and have come up with that zone of no ROI without snippets, that's what the complaints are about in the "rich snippets not appearing complaints" department. That's the myth you tried to blow out, but you are nowhere close to doing so in my mind. In fact I'll said it like it is, I really don't understand why this was published on SEOMOZ(the myth part) in the first place, a source I respect for staying away from the half-truths and semi-talking points.
"Myth: Schema.org markup doesn’t get rich snippets!
A common objection I hear to people not using Schema is that there’s no point because Google don’t use it for rich snippets. WRONG!
This was true, but is no longer; lots of websites in different markets have taken a leap of faith and are seeing the benefits in the form of rich snippets."
I should have have know just by reading your post that you didn't understand the problem. I appreciate the way you are forward looking and being adventurous, competitive, but my point isn't about that at all. It's about business common sense vs SEO. These few lines ammount to wishful thinking more than anything else.
"lots of websites in different markets" = Google selection of websites
2) "This is standard Google"
This makes for a very weak argument in this context and I hope you realize it. I know how Google work, thank you.
To blow out a myth. It needs to be something that has become a standard.(Like Google globally abandonning the Meta keywords...)
3) "Showing up on brands" is not meeting Google's own measure of success when what they are trying to do is to get everyone to use schemas. Everyone using schemas and snippets becoming universal at-index time(no form), globally, quality-triggered, would be the end of the current reality and ending the myth referred by the crowd of SEOs who have tried to get snippets for the past 2 years.
Just like Panda isn't a myth, it's a change that happened accross the world, universally, at index-time.
"I agree that an instant reward would be great…but then if it was easy everyone would be doing it. "
Everybody should be able to try to do it. I have never said anything about an expectation for "instant reward" I'm talking about a system that is repeatable, universal and logical. Everybody should be able to try to do it, the reality is: it's not there yet. A lot will try and will have no chance at ROI without knowing it. That's the danger of the half-truth you are spreading in your post.
I'm already facing the problem this generates for the SEO industry. Many of the clients I'm meeting these days have microformat or RDFa installed by their previous SEO, who was forward looking and brilliant (not being sarcastic), it cost them a bunch of their hard-earned money and when I talk about Schemas they are already very apprehensive.
"I have data; but not that I can share, sorry."
So from my point of view you have none.
"4) When are Google ever transparent?! While Google are much better than they used to be, they are definitely not transparent and it’s not in their best interest to be transparent. It’s your job as an SEO to be one step ahead. "
For starters, everytime they deal with their main clients.
Coding Schemas for large corporate site and making deep change in complex CMS can cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Maybe more) It will be very hard to move some of my clients, even the most innovative and agile ones without some form of transparency around:
1) Schema code detection by the crawler (not their test tool) They need to know if their coder have done a good enough job to get the snippets. It's one thing for the SEO to say: "Yup the tool say it's all good." And another for Google to say:"Yup it's all good."
2) Automatization of the Snippets approval process. Tell a VP than spends millions of dollars on Adwords every month that you are waiting for a submission, and that you may or may not get in based on whatever Googe decides." -VP:" Hmmm, sounds good, BUT, that's a lot of risk, I think we'll wait for the system to be a little less R&D."
Because that's what Schemas and Rich Snippets are at this point, R&D.
For the record, I am installing schemas as much as possible on my client sites, but by telling them the truth: This is risky and I won't be able to give you a lot of information outside of the very short literature, but it might pay off. It's a bet, that I choose the right situation to take.
Ok I understand you, but this conversation is starting to kill my "dreamer" mojo.
One question for you:
Imagine 5 years ago I told you that a corporate / small blogger / everyone could get ahead with social media, and that it was going to be important for the future.
Would you not invest because it was too risky or wasn't going to deliver business results?
Fantastic post Craig! I would like to complement your post with another incentive to the use of Schema.org.
It is going to be a new relevant ranking factor (Bing already previews to use it so, as Duane Forrester told here in SEOmoz in the past). And if it will not be a causation factor, surely an highly correlated one.
Just reflect:
a) with Schema Search Engines understand better the Semantic of the page's content (on page optimization),
b) rich snippets increase CTR (which is wonderful also due the personalized search nowadays),
c) rich snippets clearly shows the intent of being useful toward the users.
Being Google more and more user oriented in its algorithms (the "general" and the specific like it is Panda), you can understand why Schema is surely a great weapon you can use to ensure - while optimizing also all the other factors - a better chance to rank better than your competitors.
Thanks gfiorelli1 for the great comments and also for understanding that Schema.org is not just about rich snippets, it's about giving the search engines as many tools as possible to understand your content and see it as being a relevant result for the keywords you are targeting.
Rich snippets is just one benefit to applying markup not the only one. The sooner more people understand this, the better.
Thanks again
Craig
"Schema.org is not just about rich snippets, it's about giving the search engines as many tools as possible to understand your content and see it as being a relevant result for the keywords you are targeting."
Part of my problem with a lot of microdata of any flavor is that it's clearly just for search engines -- part of me is kind of uncomfortable with moving past the mantra of "Do it for users." Much of this seems strictly for rank or something in the SERPs (rel=author anyone?). Even with the inherent CTR boost and considering that as "for users" -- I just see it as a ploy to make various 3rd-party sites the arbiters of the internet (cf. OpenGraph). Remember that most other SEO edits can be worded as "for users," such as targeted links...
Users aren't generally going to see the markup on your page, and even with smarter CSS, wouldn't know the difference between validating Schema and broken Schema. Google and Bing are schizophrenic at best at using the markup on your page especially when you have a page with little authority. And beyond microformats, which use logical class names and valid basic HTML with a moderate case of divitis, RDFa and Schema use bloated, ugly, invalid code.
You say, too, that it's not just about rich snippets. Please elaborate on other applications. You say yourself: "If someone told you that there was a quick and easy way that many of you could improve your SERP CTR" then talk solely about different SERP formats. How is that not solely referencing rich snippets? What else is benefiting from Schema that's trafficked by real people, not just SEO wonks? Or is that the future, where many sites and services are reading Schema? Is that even a possible future?
I used rel=author as an example earlier of something solely for SERP recognition, but at least that's A) valid and B) COULD have uses beyond simply faces in the SERPs and connecting with Google+. Heck, Google has even used not-Google+ profiles as sources for the serps.
Maybe I'm just resistant to change and the "semantic web" is something more than just a buzzword; as of yet, it just seems to be a new wave of metadata circa 1996.
Nice post Craig. Biggest issues with rich snippets adoption is that their is no guarantee that it will show up even if you code it properly. It seems like only selected well known/big brands sites are qualified for rich snippets. Who wouldn't like to increase its SERP CTR if Google drop this favoritism.
Thanks seo-himanshu,
I think the main problem is that people think markup=rich snippets.
Markup is about helping machines to categorically understand what your content is about, rich snippets is just the icing on the cake.
Craig
Boy, anit that the truth. I've been marking up, and re-marking up my food/recipe site with first microformats, and now schema.org-recipe, only to feel like I'm "waiting for Godot." Although my marked-up content appears in the Rich Snippets Testing Tool, and it's showing in my Custom Search Engine, still it never seems to take in Google's main results.
*Sigh*
I'm pretty excited about the JobPosting schema myself. I do SEO for monster.com, and when I was researching rich snippets earlier this year I was amazed that it didn't already exist. I managed to find a couple of blog posts that recommended creating the schema and had suggestions for how it should be applied, so we were planning on using code that cobbled together their recommendations, hoping that using it on a few million pages would convince the powers that be to make it official.
I'm not sure when it happened, but I only learned about it becoming official last week. And I understand our military.com site is going to be feeding listings to the job bank in the National Resource Directory, and it'll be using the schema.
Love Schema.org in theory, but I found the website documentation to be ridiculously confusing. Trying to follow the instructions to mark-up relatively simple elements on a page fried my brain, and even when I was sure I had it right, the rich snippets testing tool told me otherwise...
When using .NET - vb or c#, <div itemscope ... /> will get an error and won't parse.
To solve this, you can use itemscope="itemscope". This is legitimate and worked for us.
Refer to Stack Overflow if in doubt.
Many thanks for this article! I'd been hearing about schema.org but didn't really investigate it. Part of my site provides nutritional information (calorie count) -- I saw just now that there is Nutritional Information type.
That's awesome Suzany and +1 for looking at where you can apply it to your business model.
Like others have mentioned, I would be a lot more inclined to use additional schema mark up if the search engines gave an indication that the information is likely to be used in the SERP's.
At the moment, it would be a large chunk of development time with no guarantee (or likelihood in most cases) that the mark up will be used.
If Google are genuinely keen for Schema to be more widely adopted, they should put there money where there mouth is and start displaying the mark-up in the SERP's regardless of the stature of the site/brand.
After reading all of the comments to this post I get the sense that this issue is far from straight forward. I also get the sense that for many small sites this would require a signficant amoun of work for yet to be proven value. Seems like this is about standardization in areas such as dates where ambiguity may be common. Am I wrong?
Hello. Please forgive me. Can someone help please?? I want to put rich snippets on my dream weaver site.
I have the code. BUT where do I place it in the html? OK I admitt I'm new to this and I'm sure the answer is easy but I don't know.
Can someone help me please? Thank you
Well, you certainly do practice what you preach - (or SEOMoz do), I just took a quick search for 'rich snippets' and there you are!
Bravo my Man! Nice to see a fellow Srathclyder leading the way in the SEO space. This post is a triumph.
When the Schema.org announcements first came out I was doing back flips- this is becuase it was making SEO harder. And why is that a good thing? To weed out the low level crap that is plaguing the industry and to differentiate between good and bad.
I caught a tweet from Cyrus earlier this week about a Wordpress plugin for marking up with Schema: add this with an ecommerce plugin and you are laughing. Really no excuse to not use Schema nowadays. The reason it isn't being adopted by the masses is becasue it isn't sexy and it is hard to implement on old sites. which I am thrilled about.
Thanks Ross, glad you liked it.
Good Information - I was aware but never sat down to understand the purpose.
So they have the job posting schema, why not a resume schema?
I still wonder why there are so many job site structures? Every employer asks for the same data.
Let me post it in a resume schema somewhere (Linkedin) and the employer site can pull it from there.
Has anyone seen succesfull results yet?It's been a couple months now since Google has stated the use of Schema and many have talked about implementing it within thier websites. Does anyone have some hard analytical data to show benefits? How can we tell if it's beneficial at all yet or when it starts to be?
Hi Craig,
This is shyam I have read the article and I have one query for u. I Have a website that is non ecommerce site. My website offers consultants to companies. what are the elements that are to be enabled in markup so that my site gets listed higher in SERPs
Bit late to the party, but this post provides some great insight for anyone new to schema. Acts as a really good refresher too, had overlooked a couple of the potential usage scenarios. we're just in the process of implementing schema markup across a number of e-commerce websites. With the benefits which can so easily be delivered by schema markup I too am shocked that so few websites currently utilise it on their sites!
Nice Post Craig!
Any information on whether a rich snippet exists that pull your website's Google Reviews?
Thanks,Brian
The reasons for not seeing that many websites using schema are 3:
I don't see any on Google Canada. Is this only for US? any ideas when it's going to be rolled out in Canada?
i use wordpress and it seems wordpress is not abord on schema.org yet, there are some plugins that can do it but not a lot of reviews about the plugins, may be i will have to test them out..any suggestions for wordpress plugins ?
This post and all the comments here are awesome. I found all the details that i need to explain this concept to my team. However even though schema has a broad impact on the web I think clients in general are sensitive to things like CTR, so be wise when you present this to a client.
Craig,
I've been thinking how one could turn a ThumbsUp/ThumbsDown rating into structured data for reviews.
Using this post as an example, you have 76 thumbs up and 3 thumbs down. Let's assume our Thumbs to Stars formula translates that into a 4.8 average from 79 reviews.
The page is displaying thumbs up and thumbs down to users, but we want to markup an aggregated rating to be picked up by search engines.
I assume we would code this like:
<div itemprop="aggregateRating" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/AggregateRating"> <meta itemprop="ratingValue" content="4.8"> <meta itemprop="reviewCount" content="79"> 76 thumbs up – 3 thumbs down</div>
Is this code correct? Will this be a valid syntax to get a rich snippet showing up in a SERP result for this post?
ThanksMichel
PS: Great post by the way. You've got my thumb up! :)
Ok, I have spend days and days reading about schema. I feel like I was with Google, Bing, and Yahoo when they came up with the concept. As for putting it to use, im completely lost. I tried the schema tool that writes the code for you, and pasted it into my site, and it just showed the info I put in at the top of my webpage. To show you how new I am, does the code go in the <body> or the <head>? I got a feeling that since most of my webpage is done using photoshop gif's, that I cannot do it. Am I supposed to mark up specific words in my HTML document? I have even searched some code of other websites that appear to have it when I google them and I cant find anything there that helps. My website is https://www.rumcnow.com. I am almost ready to just say it aint worth it!!Lee
Can the Schema vocabulary for "Offer" be used on abstract services as well as concrete products?
e.g. If I had a special deal on SEO consulting hours vs. a 2-4-1 deal on Matt Cutts T-shirts
I was struggling to find out its advantages but after reading this post it made my point clear. Great Post
Thank you! Very usefull and important!
Nice Share about the scheme's structured markups.
Thank you for this article, find it very useful!
Is there a schema plugin where my audience can review and vote as well? Please let me know.
Just found this hidden gem! I am struggling with Rich Snippets - Meta data and came across this. Thank you for clarifying this (even though some of it is outdated).
Hi all,
first great PR and comments here but i need some help:
can i set Schema code on the top of each post that i create it or if i use WP plugin will help more.
wait for reply. Thanks for PR Craig.
Just wondering if brand markup should sit in the header ?
Thanks for the overview. I've been working on adding semantic markup on some of my sites now, and am already starting to see some of the rich snippets. Cool!
a big thanks i have a problem and i searched everywhere for this but couldn't find itMy problem is that i have a confusion that where to put the snippet in a webpage ? I have an eCommerce site built in prestashop and i want to use the breadcrumb snippet for it and don't know where to put the snippet code in the site?Should i put the code in the head tag or in the body tag and in which pages?I am seeking a big help from everyone ? plz help me on this
Hello guys. Nice article on schema.org . I have just one question: should i put schema.org on my homepage as well? My website has 3 types: BedandBreakfast, Places , Events and my homepage has all those 3 categories. Is it a good think if i put schema.org as well on my homepage
I saw that IMDB has only on Movies and People
Is it a good thing to create also on the category page? (e.g Crime Movies)
I try to get the image icon showing up when using the rich snippet product code.Unfortunately, I can't get it done, the image does not show up.
I tried and tested the code within the Structured Data Testing tool, hit preview, and nothing shows up.
soo.. I want to have it on a DVD product... pretty simple.. here is the code:
https://data-vocabulary.org/Product"> MOVIE TITLE Part II https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bU1UG_qHppQ/UZFdjo7nf-I/AAAAAAAAAFM/E4dH-SF3mXc/s1600/rich_snippet_image.jpg" />
The Fast and the Furious https://data-vocabulary.org/Review-aggregate"> 3 stars, based on 100 reviews
What am I doing wrong ?
Thank you so much for any little help,highly appreciated !
As far as I can tell the picture is only shown for recipe search results.
If you want your profile image to appear on search results you need to link your site to your Google + profile.
Great article. I'd love to see the code behind your ebay example. Thanks!
Hi people
I'm trying to use the schema.org in my breadcrumbs... I use the examples given in the official page, but the breadcrumbs aren't recognized.
Searching I came across with this post: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vocabs/2012Jan/0016.html and other similars that talks about "the wrong syntax of chema breadcrumbs"
In the examples I read in this article I can't find any suggestion about breadcrumbs, if enyone know something about this issue please can put his experience here...
Thnx
CRAIG
Great Post!
We have a Mathematics Dictionary at our site. Example link is https://www.icoachmath.com/math_dictionary/Zero-product_Property.html
How do we choose the right type of ItemType here? Our content is delivered from a relational database with specific columns like <Mathword, Definition, Example, Solved Example, Related Links, Keywords>?
Is it going to be Thing > Intangible > Review or Thing > CreativeWork > Webpage?
Neither do justice?
How do you fit into an existing construct? Or should we use extensions? Can you provide examples for extensions, please?
Thanks
Hi Craig, the jobs markup, is this applicable to all jobs now? Or just veteran job postings/job boards?
Thanks for the clarification.
Barry
You can use the jobs schema right now: https://schema.org/JobPosting , the veteran example was just an example of how Google have used it.
Craig
Great round up of the topic. I already read several posts about schema.org but this is one of my favorites.
It will be interesting to see how Schema markup is abused by scrapers and how Google will defend against it. Particuarly if the Google Freshness update makes it easier to rank for "fresh" scraped content.
I agree with your assessment that it's an underutilized strategy, but in the long run it may be a relatively low-return investment.
I don't doubt that it increases CTR in the SERPs, and it certainly looks appealing, but until you could show me that adding microdata markup could increase my CTR for a #2-#3 result above that of a #1 result, I'm probably going to spend the majority of my time linkbuilding and reoptimizing on-page content.
If you've got the resources to spare, Schema.org markup is awesome. I'm in love with the "Jobs" markup. But until we've got some hard numbers behind these theories, it's going to be hard to convince time/budget-strapped SEOs to implement it on a large scale.
I agree with you that you should choose your battles wisely. I disagree with your question that some needs to "prove" you that CTR has to better than a #1 or #2 result.
What's wrong with just testing if getting more visibility in the SERP's increases your CTR and brings you more traffic? Why do you need prove first? That's not how online marketers should work imo.
The "proof" I refer to is hard data that shows that it impacts clickthrough rates. Besides the fact that Google doesn't show rich text markups on every result that's optimized for it (read: tags), we don't have a whole lot of concrete evidence beyond gut reactions that these actually increase CTRs, especially some of the newer markups.
If I can raise my ranking in the SERPs from a #3 position to a #2 or #1 position with the same level of effort that it takes me to implement rich text markup on my pages, then I'm going to work on linkbuilding/reoptimization to get the higher ranking, because that WILL have an impact on the amount of clicks I get.
If you're working for any client that's concerned about their bottom line, you're going to win yourself more points doing things that are tried, true and tested. If you start trying to implement a new strategy every time Google updates their algorithm, you're going to be endlessly chasing a few small details that have no proven return. You don't win clients that way, and you don't benefit your company if you're working in-house.
If you can toss a few Schema.org tags on pertinent info in your content, that's great, but I'm not going to press my developers to add a rich text markup functionality to our custom CMS, or allow us to directly edit the HTML, or dedicate bodies to Schema markup when they could be building links.
If you've got the resources to test and target, then go for it. What I'm saying is that in practical applications, while Schema tags are interesting and add aesthetic value to your site in the SERPs, we don't know how much it impacts CTR. My point isn't that it's patently useless, my point is that we don't know yet.
I think the schema.org standards will work well for sites conveying alot of nuanced data to the search, for more traditional static content, it, at this point, is a waste of time.
Great post and something that I will definately be implementing on various websites I work on. In fact, I am going to get going on it this morning!
Brilliant how your personal page shows in the serps! Great job.
Great post Craig. Schema.org and HTML5 is the future of websites and serps.
Craig Bradford excellent post mate and thanks to aware us for the importance of using rich snippets.I have an article directory and never thought that snippets can work better for me to increase the clicks but after reading a great post I will definitely give it a try.Hope my site will give more reference to the users site.
Amazing, i was literally about to do a Q/A about this (this evening). Your post was very informative. Organizing your content is pretty much what we are doing here. Or helping google understand "positively" what my content is really about.
One thing you did not touch on was local places. Does this help in their optimization? Does it give us an extra thumbs up?
I know Yodle likes to do this and they do it on most of their clients sites when doing their client optimization : ]
Good article!
I have written an article that would compliment this, about Schema's and recipe search - and why Google and Bing are being slow to roll it out worldwide (its currently USA only).
Great post Craig. I know we will be taking a closer look at how we can use this to our benefit this week.
Great post Craig!!
While I agree that the rich snipets and more data could be better for organizing sites on the search engine side, a large chunk of time with would be involved in writing the microdata despite no guarantees that the microdata would be used.
Hey, apologise for jumping late in the party.
Very informative & insightful post Craig. Cheers to you!!! Didn't know that it is one of the ranking factor search engines will include them in their algorithm.
Will definitely do it for my clients ecommerce sites :)
---> https://schema-creator.org/
We're currently trying out an experimental project called schemafeed.com, having played around with RDF, adoption and implementation is such a pain and costly, the standards change so often, each organisation/company is jostling to own the vocab, hopefully schema.org will be the final one.
I wish there was a little Schema mini course somewhere that got you to do practical implementations via coursework or otherwise... I've looked but can't find anything, if one pops up could anybody let me know? I reckon it'd be a nice little money spinner if anybody feels like making one, hint hint hehe
Awesome post about what will likely be a force in SEO and the Internet, Craig.
What would it take to see a Whiteboard Friday session discussing Schema?
I've implemented several tags from schema.org in hopes that my Google Local Business Listing would pull in my Vimeo, Google+ and Instagram tags. I've run Royal Entertainment through https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-... and verified sameAs tags for LocalBusiness however my Google Local Business profile for "Royal Entertainment Freehold, NJ" only shows Facebook, Twitter and YouTube profiles. In the past I have seen Instagram and Vimeo profiles, but they are not showing any more. Even my Google Plus profile is not showing under my Google Local Business Listing.
Enjoyed reading this post - cheers Craig ;)
Hi great post post, Schema deffiantly has some great potential for ecommerce client the thing is some times it takes dev teams a bit to move, I have also seen where some CMS's do not allow schema functionality crazy isnt it!!!
Can someone just tell me where exactly rich snippets will appear?
So if we rank well currently for a search of an ISBN and we begin to specify IBSN and an image in our microdata then perhaps our long tail search would improve due to increased visibility?
I think the main reason people arn't using schema is because it is such a pain to go through your entire site and add the codes. I keep putting it off for that reason
I looked at the IMDB page in your example and couldn't see any itemprop tags around the snippets that show up on Google. Are they serving one page to bots and another to humans?
Google has rich snippets of my site but I have not implemented rich snippets. Its picking up my directory listing of businesses. As a result searches get what they need from Rich Snippets and dont even click through to my site. My impressions are still the same but CTR has gone from 4% to 1%. I was getting about 4000 unique users a day and now only 1000. Income has gone from 2000/USD month to 500/Month.
How can I get rid of rich snippets or at least stop them showing the phone numbers. Do I need to implement the schema.org and not include the phone numbers.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing.