Has anyone starting using schema.org?
-
On the 3rd June 2011 Google announced that they are going to start using Schema.
Do you think this will change the way search engines find content, from briefly looking at Schema I'm concerned that the proposed tags could just turn into another keyword meta tag and be abused.
Have you started using this tags yet and have you noticed a difference?
-
Here's a little tidbit. At SMX Advanced today, Stephan Weitz, Head of Search at Bing, confirmed two things I asked.
1. He was recently interviewed by Eric Enge, owner of Stone Temple consulting. In that interview, Stephan said that Bing is moving from how they currently interpret words in content as nouns, to where they want to understand words as they relate to actions - to understand web site intent - to then match that more accurately to searcher intent.
After I read that interview, schema.org was announced - a way to help search engines better understand the intent of the content. And those to concepts clicked in my head - so I asked him - do schema.org and their desire to understand web site intent (as described in that interview) go hand in hand? Are they directly related? He said yes - schema.org is the key to it all.
2. He also confirmed that "schema.org is not a ranking factor now, but it will become a ranking factor. THAT is huge. Why? because people will be required to implement it because failing to do so will harm their rankings. Adopting a microdata solution is no longer a "it would be nice if you did". it's going to be a standard practice.
The search engines, in one shot, with schema.org, drew a new line in the sand. Either get with the program, or suffer. Not today, but it WILL happen.
My experience with other evolving changes to this industry over the 10 years I've been involved with SEO is that when a major shift occurs, it's usually about a year before it's critical for best practices SEO.
When May Day happened, I saw the writing on the wall back then - and spent the next six to 9 months helping various clients change their site architecture accordingly. None of those clients lost rankings when Panda happened. Several clients I got who came to me AFTER panda, who were seriously harmed by Panda, saw a plunge as a result of May Day. It was the advance writing on the wall for Panda in many ways. At least in my experience.
So that's why I am now more confident than ever that people in this industry have a year to generally get on board. Those who can do it within six to nine months will have a competitive advantage.
-
Barry,
You're on a good point - it's a brand new "solution" to an age old "the search engines need help determining quality content" issue. So it's far from polished.
On the other hand, we ARE talking about gambling sites, not necessarily the lions share of important mainstream sites depending on how you look at it.
And I appreciate you saying it could be about the pain it'd be to implement. I believe that's going to ensure a LOT of sites don't get it, which means, if I am correct, those that do will have a significant competitive advantage by mid next year.
-
I don't know. I very much like the idea and to couple it with HTML5 elements, like
<header>and
<footer>, but (although I've not read everything extensively) it doesn't seen to cover every kind of website (specifically the gambling ones I work on).
There is a casino tag, but that's for a location rather than a site. I could mark up the promos as an offer, but that's not really what it's for. I could mark them up as articles, but again it's not a great fit either. And again same with product.
I really only think it'll be useful for categorizing pages which may be shown on differing SERPs pages. Otherwise it doesn't seem to be a particularly good idea to use it as a big ranking factor when not all sites can use it.
Certain elements like 'mainContentOfPage' and 'mainImageOfPage' and 'signifcantLinks' may count (and are the sort of thing all sites can impliment) but for every tag to carry a weight... I'm not sure.
Of course I may just be trying to convince myself of this as implimenting these tags on dozens of sites is not going to be fun.
</footer>
</header>
-
I believe Schema.org will be a critical aspect to SEO in 2012. It's going to take that long for the search engines to adapt their algorithms, and for use to become widespread. It will become widespread, in my opinion, for a couple very important reasons.
All three of the big three search engines got on board with this at the same time. That alone is a major signal of how important this is. People discounted sitemaps.org initially and that was only supported by Google initially. This is all three at once.
Next - I personally have already directed my agency client development teams that schema.org implementation is required - not optional - and that they have 6 months to get with the program. No wiggle room. Several other seasoned industry vets I've spoken with are taking the same action.
Schema.org is going to give the search engines the desperate help they need in better understanding content/data intent as it's meant to be intended by site owners, and matching that against searcher intent. It's going to be a way for the engines to improve the quality of their indexed sites. And amazing as it may sound, it's actually going to help them in some ways to combat spam even more than they do now. Because it's bringing structured consistency to the content of a site at a level they have not previously been able to achieve.
-
I'm still waiting to see how other sites are implementing it. I have an information site and I just can't see it helping.
However, I also have a real estate site and it would make sense to add it there. I plan on doing it but I have to do more reading to wrap my head around it first though!
-
None of my sites would overly benefit from the rewrite necessary to impliment the suggestions, however I will be looking at using it on some new sites.
You are correct in that anything users can manipulate can be abused, however it would be a reasonable effort to use the tags properly across a whole site and an extra step that's not really necessary for spammers, so while I don't think it'll be abused too much I also don't think it will be given any weight but instead simply used to sort data.
One advantage may be that you can get into other verticals with your site (as in, if there's a way to show 'events' in the SERPs) but I'm not sure if or when that would be implimented/useful.
I would certainly assume it would be too early to show any changes to a site for those that have implimented it (and if they have they're ninjas) but I would also be interested to see who is using it.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Schema for Plastic Surgery Procedure
Hi, i am doing Schema and don't know what type of property i should use for treatments like liposuction or botox or stuff like that. Would you use MedicalProcedure Markup? Thanks for helping me.
Algorithm Updates | | individualmarketing0 -
Optimising meta tags: How to write them perfectly without duplicating? Impact of using different keywords?
Hi friends, Generally most of the articles about tags are either title rag or header tags, but not about both. I would like to know how to write perfect title and header tags. How much they must be relevant and different? Can we use the same tags for title and H1? If we are planning to rank for different keywords, can that different keywords can be used? I'm really curious to see some interesting answers for this. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Anyone else notice a traffic drop around June 28th 2016?
Hey guys, i know there is a lot of chatter about a potential google update on / around June 28th... well, one of the sites I manage was hit pretty bad. I have attached an image showing what our ranking looked like before and after the unconfirmed update. As you will see, we plummeted that day and have not yet recovered. Has anyone else experienced drops? I'm trying to identify potential causes. I've started an SEO audit and so far I have identified 1 big fish and a few niggly bits. Big Fish: non-www version of site had redirect rule overwritten by CloudFlare page rules and is using a 302 redirect instead of a 301. Now could this be the cause? Niggly bits: technical SEO issues and optimisations like having unique meta titles etc. If you have noticed drops or think you can shed some light on my situation that will help me then I would love to hear from you 🙂 Thanks upload.png upload.png
Algorithm Updates | | OptiBacUK0 -
Google AMP (accelerated mobile pages), can it be used for non-Google news and Ecommerce Websites?
Mozzers, I've been doing a lot of research on Google's new Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) https://moz.com/blog/accelerated-mobile-pages-whiteboard-friday. From what I'm seeing, these AMP version websites are only for Google News-worthy websites such as New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and the BuzzFeeds of the world. But what about Ecommerce websites like Ebay or Amazon? Will AMP versions of "scotch tape" via OfficeDepot work in the SERP's on non-Google News cards?
Algorithm Updates | | Shawn1240 -
Has anyone else seen sizable rops in Yahoo traffic over the last 30 days?
We've seen consistent traffic from yahoo of about 4000-5000 visitors a month from Yahoo traffic and then all of a sudden when pulling reporting for January 2013, we saw a very significant 40-50% drop from them. We're not seeing any ranking changes in our terms on Yahoo and are curious if anyone else is seeing the drops which may indicate some incorrectly tagged bots, or something wrong from a Yahoo side. While we (like most businesses) primarily focus on Google traffic, Yahoo still provides sizable traffic and a drop like this makes it noticeable. Anyone else seeing drops in Yahoo traffic for January?
Algorithm Updates | | GeorgiaSEOServices0 -
Outsourcing of guest blog articles and usefulness of links from guest blogging
I'm not the greatest writer but want to do some guest blogging for links and traffic. Are there any businesses out there that write world class guest blog articles for subjects that match my business? Also, i've read that doing this for links is really moot because the blog posts get archived and become pagerank "unranked" thereby offering little link value after about a month or so. Once they get archived do they still get counted by google and does the anchor text and page rank still count? Thanks in advance mozzers! Ron
Algorithm Updates | | Ron100 -
Should I use the Disavow Tool at this point?
After Penguin, our site: www.stadriemblems.com jumped up to #1 for the keyword "embroidered patches." Now, months later, it's at the top pf page two. I'm pretty sure this is because we do have a few shady links (I didn't do it!) that perhaps Penguin didn't catch the first time around, but now Google is either discounting them or counting them against us. My question is, since I'm pretty sure those links are the reason we are gradually declining, should I submit them to Google as disavowed, even though technically, we're not penalized . . . yet? I have done everything possible to get them removed, and it's not happening.
Algorithm Updates | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Google.co.uk vs pages from the UK - anyone noticed any changes?
We've started to notice some changes in the rankings of Google UK and Google pages from the UK. Pages from the UK have always typically ranked higher, however it seems like these are slipping, and Google UK pages (pages from the web) are climbing. We've noticed a similar thing happening in the Bing/Yahoo algorithm as well. Just wondered if anyone else has anyone else noticed this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Digirank0