Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How does educational organization schema interact with Google's knowledge graph?
-
Hi there!
I was just wondering if the granular options of the Organization schema, like Educational Organization (http://schema.org/EducationalOrganization) and CollegeOrUniversity (http://schema.org/CollegeOrUniversity) schema work the same when it comes to pulling data into the knowledge graph.
I've typically always used the Organization schema for customers but was wondering if there are any drawbacks for going deep into the hierarchy of schema.
Cheers
-
The schema interacts with Google's knowledge graph by providing structured data markup on web pages. This schema helps search engines understand and categorize content related to educational institutions, including details like name, location, courses offered, and contact information. When Google's crawler identifies this schema, it may enhance the visibility and accuracy of information about educational organizations in search results and potentially contribute to the knowledge graph's database of structured information.
-
Unfortunately, I haven't seen any studies of that nature. I typically look at it pragmatically -- is there a change in SERP features related to that schema (i.e. is there direct, measurable benefit)? So far, I haven't seen any. On the other hand, I don't see any evidence of harm, as long as the schema is appropriate and well-structured. It just comes down to where you want to put your time/effort.
-
Hi Dr. Meyers,
Many thanks for the response, it's kind of in line with what I was thinking.
If the data is structured and presented in the same clean format as the parent Organization schema then I can't see why Google would not treat it in the same way as a data point.
I don't suppose by chance you've come across any solid studies about schema, far down in the hierarchy, and the impacts it has.
The only studies I can find are of generic schema, and being very data driven I was hoping to find some evidence for using these.
-
I haven't seen the specific Educational Organization schema have an impact on SERPs, but they're diverging so much lately that it's hard to say. There are some specialty carousels like this:
https://www.google.com/search?q=best+colleges+in+wyoming
...that could be using it, but I suspect this is coming from the broader Knowledge Graph. Individual colleges have Knowledge Panels, but a lot of that data is coming from GMB listings, best I know.
There's no real harm, if the data is appropriate and well-structured (i.e. you're not putting a university mark-up on a sandwich shop page). The drawback is basically spending the time and energy and getting nothing in return.
I guess the other drawback is that Google could use that data to feed its own internal database but not give you anything in return. That's a drawback of basically everything in SEO right now, though.
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
-
Change Google's version of Canonical link
Hi My website has millions of URLs and some of the URLs have duplicate versions. We did not set canonical all these years. Now we wanted to implement it and fix all the technical SEO issues. I wanted to consolidate and redirect all the variations of a URL to the highest pageview version and use that as the canonical because all of these variations have the same content. While doing this, I found in Google search console that Google has already selected another variation of URL as canonical and not the highest pageview version. My questions: I have millions of URLs for which I have to do 301 and set canonical. How can I find all the canonical URLs that Google has autoselected? Search Console has a daily quota of 100 or something. Is it possible to override Google's version of Canonical? Meaning, if I set a variation as Canonical and it is different than what Google has already selected, will it change overtime in Search Console? Should I just do a 301 to highest pageview variation of the URL and not set canonicals at all? This way the canonical that Google auto selected might get redirected to the highest pageview variation of the URL. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SDCMarketing0 -
Forwarded vanity domains, suddenly resolving to 404 with appended URL's ending in random 5 characters
We have several vanity domains that forward to various pages on our primary domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SS.Digital
e.g. www.vanity.com (301)--> www.mydomain.com/sub-page (200) These forwards have been in place for months or even years and have worked fine. As of yesterday, we have seen the following problem. We have made no changes in the forwarding settings. Now, inconsistently, they sometimes resolve and sometimes they do not. When we load the vanity URL with Chrome Dev Tools (Network Pane) open, it shows the following redirect chains, where xxxxx represents a random 5 character string of lower and upper case letters. (e.g. VGuTD) EXAMPLE:
www.vanity.com (302, Found) -->
www.vanity.com/xxxxx (302, Found) -->
www.vanity.com/xxxxx (302, Found) -->
www.vanity.com/xxxxx/xxxxx (302, Found) -->
www.mydomain.com/sub-page/xxxxx (404, Not Found) This is just one example, the amount of redirects, vary wildly. Sometimes there is only 1 redirect, sometimes there are as many as 5. Sometimes the request will ultimately resolve on the correct mydomain.com/sub-page, but usually it does not (as in the example above). We have cross-checked across every browser, device, private/non-private, cookies cleared, on and off of our network etc... This leads us to believe that it is not at the device or host level. Our Registrar is Godaddy. They have not encountered this issue before, and have no idea what this 5 character string is from. I tend to believe them because per our analytics, we have determined that this problem only started yesterday. Our primary question is, has anybody else encountered this problem either in the last couple days, or at any time in the past? We have come up with a solution that works to alleviate the problem, but to implement it across hundreds of vanity domains will take us an inordinate amount of time. Really hoping to fix the cause of the problem instead of just treating the symptom.0 -
Should you allow an auto dealer's inventory to be indexed?
Due to the way most auto dealership website populate inventory pages, should you allow inventory to be indexed at all? The main benefit us more content. The problem is it creates duplicate, or near duplicate content. It also creates a ton of crawl errors since the turnover is so short and fast. I would love some help on this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gauge1230 -
404's - Do they impact search ranking/how do we get rid of them?
Hi, We recently ran the Moz website crawl report and saw a number of 404 pages from our site come back. These were returned as "high priority" issues to fix. My question is, how do 404's impact search ranking? From what Google support tells me, 404's are "normal" and not a big deal to fix, but if they are "high priority" shouldn't we be doing something to remove them? Also, if I do want to remove the pages, how would I go about doing so? Is it enough to go into Webmaster tools and list it as a link no to crawl anymore or do we need to do work from the website development side as well? Here are a couple of examples that came back..these are articles that were previously posted but we decided to close out: http://loyalty360.org/loyalty-management/september-2011/let-me-guessyour-loyalty-program-isnt-working http://loyalty360.org/resources/article/mark-johnson-speaks-at-motivation-show Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | carlystemmer0 -
Do Q&A 's work for SEO
If I create a good community in my particular field on my SEO site and have a quality Q&A section like this etc (ripping of MOZ's idea here sorry, I hope it's ok) will the long term returns be worth the effort of creating and man ageing this. Is the user created content of as much use as I think it will be?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mark_baird0 -
When to Use Schema vs. Facebook Open Graph?
I have a client who for regulatory reasons cannot engage in any social media: no Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ accounts. No social sharing buttons allowed on the site. The industry is medical devices. We are in the process of redesigning their site, and would like to include structured markup wherever possible. For example, there are lots of schema types under MedicalEntity: http://schema.org/MedicalEntity Given their lack of social media (and no plans to ever use it), does it make sense to incorporate OG tags at all? Or should we stick exclusively to the schemas documented on schema.org?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Allie_Williams0 -
What's the best way to redirect categories & paginated pages on a blog?
I'm currently re-doing my blog and have a few categories that I'm getting rid of for housecleaning purposes and crawl efficiency. Each of these categories has many pages (some have hundreds). The new blog will also not have new relevant categories to redirect them to (1 or 2 may work). So what is the best place to properly redirect these pages to? And how do I handle the paginated URLs? The only logical place I can think of would be to redirect them to the homepage of the blog, but since there are so many pages, I don't know if that's the best idea. Does anybody have any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kking41200 -
Is there any negative SEO effect of having comma's in URL's?
Hello, I have a client who has a large ecommerce website. Some category names have been created with comma's in - which has meant that their software has automatically generated URL's with comma's in for every page that comes beneath the category in the site hierarchy. eg. 1 : http://shop.deliaonline.com/store/music,-dvd-and-games/dvds-and-blu_rays/ eg. 2 : http://shop.deliaonline.com/store/music,-dvd-and-games/dvds-and-blu_rays/action-and-adventure/ etc... I know that URL's with comma's in look a bit ugly! But is there 'any' SEO reason why URL's with comma's in are any less effective? Kind Regs, RB
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichBestSEO0