{"id":16148,"date":"2017-10-25T12:01:40","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T09:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/?p=16148"},"modified":"2017-10-26T14:58:42","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T11:58:42","slug":"structured-markup-penalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/16148\/structured-markup-penalty\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything You Need to Know About Spammy Structured Markup Penalty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Used correctly, structured markup data is a good decision to help websites display correct information on searches and increase the organic search visibility. But what happens if you use it incorrectly?\u00a0<\/p>\n

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As we all know it, Google is not a fan of websites that don’t comply with quality guidelines and don’t offer the best user experience. So it may be that the structured data abuse to mark irrelevant content can potentially hurt your site. If you’ve been hit by a spammy structured markup penalty, you know what I’m talking about. If not, you’ll understand what you need to do in the following lines.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"How<\/p>\n

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All your questions will be answered today. You’ll find out how a spammy structured data looks like, how to remove and avoid a penalty and if there are any repercussions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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It all started with a question on Google Webmaster Central office hours hangout. Plus, we\u2019ve seen a lot of discussions many times before from people around the internet saying their structured data is removed from search engine results. You can find questions on Twitter, Reddit<\/strong><\/a> or social media in general, forums<\/a> <\/strong>(including\u00a0Google Webmaster Forum<\/strong><\/a>), blog post comments and so on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"Forum<\/p>\n

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We decided to take the matter into our own hands and find out if there is such thing as spammy structured markup penalty, how to avoid it, and if it has any impact on rankings.<\/p>\n

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    \n
  1. How Does Structured Data Work?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Does Spammy Structured Markup Penalty Really Exist?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. What to Do If You’re Hit by a Structured Data Penalty?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. How to Avoid a Spammy Structured Markup Penalty?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  5. Will Structured Markup Action Kill My Rankings?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
     <\/div>\n

    1. How Does Structured Data Work<\/h2>\n

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    Structured markup data is used by a website to make Google understand better the content on a page. Furthermore, it can improve the appearance of a page on search. The main purpose of the structured markup data is to offer an organized search experience to the user.\u00a0Google Search also uses structured data to show rich result display, as you can see in the following screenshot.<\/p>\n

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    \"Rich\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

    Nonetheless, on Google Developers there is an explanatory note, saying that:<\/p>\n

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    Google does not guarantee that your structured data will show up in search results, even if your page is marked up correctly according to the Structured Data Testing Tool<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    There is the situation where your rich snippets might not appear even if they are set up correctly. That happens because Google knows the users might not be interested in that information.<\/p>\n

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    Nonetheless, <\/span>every now and then there is someone who wants to exaggerate and take a lot of space in SERP with redundant information.\u00a0 And that\u2019s why we probably have so many Google guidelines<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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    Basically, if you want to display rich snippets in Google, you need to observe the Structured Data Guidelines<\/a><\/strong> and your site needs to comply with the Webmaster Guidelines.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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    Google Developer is the place where you should find all the answers. There you have instructions, a list of all the featured snippets, errors, and guidelines. There are a lot\u00a0of\u00a0common causes<\/a><\/strong> of structured data manual actions. Let\u2019s take into consideration the next examples of good practice and bad practice.<\/p>\n

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    Spammy Structured Data Examples<\/strong><\/h3>\n

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    Reviews are a widespread practice, maybe one of the most used rich snippets. If you search on Google for \u201cbest vacuums reviews\u201d at some point will find this site:<\/p>\n

    \"Best<\/p>\n

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    At first sight, it doesn\u2019t send\u00a0a spammy signal, but if you take a second look at the reviews and the title tag, you\u2019ll find out that there might be more products on the page. After you enter the site, you\u2019ll find a list of vacuums. Each of them has a different set of 5-star rating.<\/p>\n

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    \"Vacuum<\/p>\n

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    That\u2019s not making any sense. How are those five stars from the SERP calculated? At the bottom of the page there is some sort of an explanation box:<\/p>\n

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    \"Bad<\/p>\n

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    But in the end, what do the 5 star ratings in SERP exactly mean? Because the explanation box shows only 3\/5 stars, not 5\/5 as featured on Google. It abuses the rich snippets reviews<\/a><\/strong>, it is misleading, and it violates the Structured Data Guidelines.<\/p>\n

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    The page mentioned above\u00a0<\/b><\/span>has a lot of bad snippets integration:<\/p>\n

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    The first one<\/strong> is the fact that the site wrote those reviews (as you could see in the title – “We rated this vacuums”). Google explains very well that the\u00a0reviews must come from customers or unpaid users and under no circumstances by the site.<\/p>\n

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    Snippets must not be written or provided by the business or content provider unless they are genuine, independent, and unpaid editorial reviews.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Another one<\/strong> is the fact that the reviews need to be assigned for a single product\/service, not for all of them. For example, “hotels in Madrid,” “summer dresses,” or “cake recipes” are not specific items. And of course \u201cpet hair vacuums\u201d is not very specific.<\/p>\n

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    Provide review and\/or rating information about a specific item, not about a category or a list of items.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Structured Data Testing Tool is the easiest way to view a result from your data and check if you set them right.<\/p>\n

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    Groupon has some bad usage of markup data for a page with Amazon coupons. For example, if we use the testing tool, we can see that a link was marked instead of the name of the offer.<\/p>\n

    \"Structured<\/p>\n

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    The guidelines assert very clearly that the name of the product has to be text, the name of the product itself, not the name of the company, the manufacturing, the description of URL.<\/p>\n

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    Correct Structured Data Examples<\/strong><\/h3>\n

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    After all these bad examples we deserve to see a good implementation of structured data markup as well.<\/p>\n

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    Booking.com has good implementations for the accommodations. In the screenshot below, you can see that we’ve searched for a specific hotel, and it has 4 stars out of 5, the number of reviews and the price.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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    \"Good<\/p>\n

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    If we look on TripAdvisor, we will see the same number of stars and reviews. For the price, TripAdvisor gives an average value based on the aggregator websites mentioned as partners.<\/p>\n

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    \"booking<\/p>\n

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    2. Does Spammy Structured Markup Penalty Really Exist?<\/h2>\n

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    According to Google, spammy structured markup<\/a><\/strong> penalty exists. On Webmasters Forum there are a lot of people that received a message in Search Console; Manual actions saying that the website\u2019s schema code is spammy and it violates Google’s quality guidelines.<\/p>\n

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    In the screenshot below you can see an example of such a message:<\/p>\n

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    \"search-console-manual-actions-warning\"<\/p>\n

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    In June 2017, Jonh Mueller talked about spammy structured markup penalty. See below the message he received in the hangout:<\/p>\n

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    Recently, we\u2019ve been hit with a penalty for spammy structured data and we\u2019d like some advice so we can adhere to the guidelines going forward. The guidelines are a little fuzzy in this area, as most of our pages are service categories.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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