Using Schema.org: Product or Event as the schema type?
-
Hello,
Most of you heard from the launch of the new format for microdata: Schema.org and my question is about the different types of Schema they provide. Our websites provide an overview of courses, visitors can search/filter training courses and most important: read peer reviews.
Until now we formatted (the source) of those courses with the schema type "Product" because it allows us to provide search engines with metadata about reviews via the "Aggregrated Rating". Recently we updated the information about courses, to also provide start dates and locations to users, just like the schema type for: "Events".
Because we would like to provide search engines also with both types of data I would like to know your opinion. Schema.org looks like not to support the Aggregated Rating for Events and vice versa for Startdates/Locations for the Product type. And combining the two Schema types also does not looks like an option because we can't put them on the same level like it should be.
So what would you recommend to use for kind of schema type(s), are we able to use the 'Product' type next to the 'Event' type and so to combine them?
Thanks a lot!
-
The purpose behind 'the schema' is to help search engines better match semantic search terms with relevant user information. Word out there is that is doesn't help in the SERPs. See this article. But it might and Google may have integrated it into their algo yesterday for all we know.
With it being relatively new in the search landscape and little evidence of testing out there, I'd recommend that you donate some time to the cause It just so happens that you'll likely get your answer from doing so. Here's how I'd do it:
1. Choose the pages you'll be measuring... the more you use, the better the data...
2. Measure where these pages rank in your search results before making any changes.
3.. Divide those pages into thirds and apply the 'Events' schema to a third, the 'Aggregate Rating' to a third, and apply nothing to the remaining third.
4. Track and report your findings.
Obviously, there are some potential hang-ups here (ie. if you aren't ranking in the top 50 for your target keywords and are using SEOMoz to track). After rubbing my magic 8-ball, I'm going to prophesize that you won't see a significant difference for a few reasons (or any at all).
Finally, I'd suggest that you persuade the engines to focus on the aggregate review information. If you look around, you'll notice that reviews are being increasingly integrated as major indicators in search algos. Events? Not so much.
There are many issues at hand, but you get to decide which are important and which you're going to act on. Either way, good luck!
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
-
What Tools Do I USe To Find Why My Site No Longer Ranks
Hi, I made the mistake of hiring a freelancer to work on my website [in2town.co.uk](link url) but after having a good website things went from bad to worse. The freelancer was kicked off the platform due to lots of compliants from people and creating backdoors to websites and posting on them. It cost me money to have the back door to our site closed. I then found lots of websites were stealing my content through the rss feed. Two of those sites have now been shut down by their hosting company. With all these problems I found in Feb that the hundreds of keywords that I ranked for had vanished. And all the ones that were in the top ten for many years have also vanished. When I create an article which includes https://www.in2town.co.uk/skegness-news/lincolnshire-premier-inn-staff-fear-for-their-jobs/ they cannot be found in Google. Normally before all these problems, my articles were found straight away. If I put in the title name Lincolnshire Premier Inn Staff Fear For Their Jobs and then add In2town in front of it, then instead of the page coming up with the article, it instead shows the home page. Can anyone please advise what tools i should be using to find out the problems and solve them, and can anyone offer advice please on what to do to solve this.
Technical SEO | | blogwoman10 -
Same URL, different Drupal content types
Hi all, I am working in Drupal which isn't always SEO-friendly. I want to convert some of our articles that are currently in an old article type to our new shiny longform template without losing SEO value. The process we use right now is to: change the URL of the old article in the CMS from /article-title to /article-title-old and then make the longform template /article-title in the CMS. Then hit publish. That way we can avoid having to mess with redirects. My concerns are that this will be seen as a bait and switch by Google. They are, after all, two separate pages — node-1 and node-2 on the back end — that are being smushed into the same skin aka same URL. I don't know if updating to the new template wipes out some of the info Google may have deemed important. I guess you could argue it's a redesign by CMS but I'm still not sure. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | webbedfeet0 -
Added Schema and Rankings Went Down
Hello - We launched a schema plugin for our WordPress site to make our blog seen as articles and main page as an organization. The day after, we saw a dramatic decrease in Keyword rankings but our website health improved with Google. Any thoughts on what could be causing this?
Technical SEO | | Erin_IAN0 -
Will Google Data Highlighter support other schemas?
At the moment I see that the Data Highlighter supports a few schemas such as Events, Products, Articles, Restaurants etc. My client has a training division and runs regular training courses so we want to highlight those using the tool as "Training Courses," but this is not an option. Does anyone know why the tool doesn't support more categories and if there are plans to expand what it supports? I realise it would be better to use actual HTML markup onto the client site but their website is administered by their corporate parent in another country and they are not prepared to add in a Wordpress plugin to allow this. But the UK division, that we work for, wants to use it. We have restricted access to the Wordpress site so we don't have the access rights to add in plugins ourselves otherwise it would be no problem to do this.
Technical SEO | | mfrgolfgti1 -
What Metadata should one use multi country directory
Currently this is what applies throughout the site. property="og:locale" content="en_GB" /> How would one set this for properties in Italy or Spain for example? (The language is all in English) Regards Tai
Technical SEO | | Taiger0 -
Using a Colo Load Balancer to serve content
So this is a little complicated (at least for me...) We have a client who is having us rebuild and optimize about 350 pages of their website in our CMS. However, the rest of the website will not be on our CMS. We wanted to build these pages on a sub-domain that is pointed to our IPs so it could remain on our CMS--which the client wants. However, they want the content on a sub-directory. This would be fine but they will not point the main domain to us and for whatever reason this becomes impossible per their Dev team. They have proposed using a Colo Load Balancer to deliver the content from our system (which will be on the sub domain) to their sub directory. This seems very sketchy to me. Possible duplicate content? Would this be a sort of URL masking? How would Google see this? Has anyone ever even heard of doing anything like this?
Technical SEO | | Vizergy0 -
Product page Canonicalization best practice
I'm getting duplicate content errors in GWT for product list pages that look like this: -www.example.com/category-page/product
Technical SEO | | IceIcebaby
-www.example.com/category-page/product/?p=2 The "p=2" example already has a rel=canonical in place, " Shouldn't the non-canonical pages be using the canonical attribute for the first page rather than the additional product pages? Thanks!0 -
Can Google Read schema.org markup within Ajax?
Hi All, as a local business directory, we also display Openinghours on a business listing page. ex. http://www.goudengids.be/napoli-kontich-2550/
Technical SEO | | TruvoDirectories
At the same time I also have schema.org markup for Openinghours implemented.
But, for technical reasons (performance), the openinghours (and the markup alongside) are displayed using AJAX. I'm wondering if google is able to read the markup. The rich snippet tool and markup plugings like Semantic Inspector can't "see" the markup for openinghours. Any advice here?0