[How to] Avoid Google's new penalty: spammy rich snippets

[How to] Avoid Google's new penalty: spammy rich snippets

Make sure your site is not at risk of getting penalized for misusing structured markup or rich snippets.

View complete guide on WebMeUp blog:

http://webmeup.com/blog/spammy-structured-markup.html



Why care about Google thinking your rich snippets are spammy?



Google is now sending a new type of manual action notifications to site owners who use spammy structured markup on their resources.

In the meanwhile, website owners might not even suspect their structured markup might be considered spammy (or that their site is using something called “structured markup” at all!



So first, let’s make sure we all understand

a) what is structured markup at all

and

b) what’s the difference between structured markup and rich snippets





is a piece of HTML code on your page that's organized (structured) in such a way that it gives search engines additional information about your content.

Structured markup

Basically, it is like telling search engines, "Look! This piece of content is a food recipe."





Example of structured markup:





A rich snippet

is the representation of your marked-up information in search results. So, if structured markup is a piece of code, then a rich snippet is the visual part of that code displayed on Google.



By the way, Google provides a tool (called Structured Data Testing Tool) that lets one see which structured data the search engine is capable of recognizing on a page.



http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

Example of a rich snippet





Good to know: Sometimes Google derives additional connotations from your page's HTML code independently, even if you don't explicitly mark up anything on your site.

Besides, Google has been trying to build its services (such as YouTube or Google+) in such a way that structured data is easily retrieved and displayed in search results:





It’s quite enough to know the most popular structured data uses… because even though there are hundreds of structured data templates available (including Schemas, OpenGraph formats, etc.), only about a dozen of them are widely used by webmasters/SEOs.



So let’s take a look!

http://schema.org/docs/full.html

http://ogp.me/



Authorship markup



Google began supporting rel="author" tag back in June, 2011, and the format gained mass adoption among online marketers.

And that's easily understandable - what could be easier than claiming your authorship over a piece of content, and getting your headshot appear next to the said piece in search results!



http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/authorship/

Video object markup If you have a video on your webpage that's relevant to the rest of the content, it's always a good idea to highlight it using either the Video Object Schema, or the OpenGraph video template.



http://schema.org/VideoObject



Music piece markupThis popular format lets one mark up a music piece on a site. At Schema.org, you can find the MusicRecording template that can be used for these purposes, while OpenGragh has a number of music-related forms for it.



http://www.schema.org/MusicRecording

http://www.schema.org/MusicRecording

http://ogp.me/#type_music.song



Article markup Needless to say, article markup is a must these days for any online journal or news resource that has online presence.

Both Schema for articles and OpenGraph's article standard let one specify different information about a news piece such as its name, image, author, publication date, and more.



http://schema.org/Article

http://ogp.me/#type_article

http://ogp.me/#type_article



Recipe markup Google used to have a separate search product one could use to search recipes, but it’s no longer provided. Hence, implementing recipe markup on your site to stand out among other recipe results is now as important as ever.



BTW, Google has a format one can use to markup recipe details on a site.



https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/173379

Reviews and ratings

Oh well…





Are they the reason Google went all nuts?

It's been several years since webmasters began noticing that some competitors would manipulate their visible reviews/ratings by playing with micro formats in their code.



So, it may be the case that the recent Google's rich snippets penalty (which we're going to talk about in the following section of this presentation), deals with fake ratings/reviews among other things.

http://www.seroundtable.com/fake-google-rich-snippets-14492.html



A legitimate way to have your rating/reviews information displayed in the search results would be to markup the sections where you have this information using the AggregateRating Schema.



Good to know:Rating/review markup is incorporated into a whole number of general-interest Schemas (such as CreativeWork, Recipe, Offer, Place, etc.) That's because virtually any type of product or service you can think of, can potentially have reviews.

http://schema.org/AggregateRating



http://schema.org/CreativeWork

http://schema.org/Recipe

http://schema.org/Offer

http://schema.org/Place

Product markup This type of markup would probably be of the biggest interest to e-commerce sites. The Product Schema lets you specify various characteristics of your products.



http://schema.org/Product



Local searchThey say 20% of all search queries on Google have local intent. So, if you have a local business, consider being represented not only in Google's 10-blue-links search results, but also in Local Search.



Right now, the easiest way to claim your local listing is to create a Google+ Page for local.

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http://www.google.com/intl/en/+/business/

And one more thing…



If you’re a local biz, remember to encourage your customers to leave honest reviews for your biz through their Google+ accounts.

This will increase your chances of ranking higher in local search results.



Now let’s get to the main part.



How to avoid spammy structured markup penalty?



As we learned earlier,Google just began penalizing webmasters for what they call "spammy structured markup.“



It's a manual penalty (meaning a real human must have looked at your site) and can only be reversed if one removes spammy markup and files for reconsideration.



https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35843?hl=en

So far, Google has not specified what kind of behavior can lead to a structured markup penalty. It may provide an example or two in Google Webmaster Tools if your site gets affected, so, keep an eye on that.

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Apart from it, we will now list some simple rules to follow that we think will minimize one's chance of getting hit by this penalty.





Rule 1. Check for manual penalties



To make sure your site is currently not penalized for spammy structured markup, head to Google Webmaster Tools -> Search Traffic -> Manual Actions.

If you see the following message there (see the screenshot below), this means everything is fine:



Rule 2. Use Google's Structured Data Testing Tool



Use Structured Data Testing Tool (also available in Google Webmaster Tools -> Other Resources) to see if any of your pages have structural markup issues. Google would often alert you if any of the markup used is inappropriate.





Example 1:



Example 2:



Rule 3. Pick the right Schemato mark up pages



When implementing structural markup on your site's pages, make sure the formats/templates you use are the best choice for the data you are using them on.



Beware of hypernyms!If you look at the assortment of Schemas (structured data formats/templates) available at Schema.org, you'll see that some of them are hypernyms like “Thing” or “Event”, while others describe more specific things, such as “MusicEvent”, “SportsEvent”, etc.



http://schema.org/docs/full.html



What's a hypernym? It's a common term that can be used for a group of terms. For example, flower is a hypernym for such words as daisy, rose, lily, etc.



So do not use hypernymic templates when there is a specific one.



When deciding which template to use in which case…choose the one that's most relevant to the type of information you have on the page.



For example, if your page is about an upcoming music concert, use the MusicEvent schema, and not the MusicRecording one.



In conclusion



If you think structured markup is implemented correctly on your pages (and Structured Data Testing Tool confirms that)

… yet it doesn't show up in search results

DON’T WORRY!



At the same timeAs far as getting a manual penalty for spammy structured markup is concerned, unless you're purposefully implementing markup that's manipulative or misleading, your website should be on the safe side.

View more SEO guides on WebMeUp blog: http://webmeup.com/blog/

This guide has been brought to you by WebMeUp, the team behind world’s finest SEO tools.

Review the instructions you’ve read in this presentation, and feel free to ask us any questions you might have!

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[How to] Avoid Google's new penalty: spammy rich snippets

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