WebProNews

Tag: Markup

  • Your Brand’s Social Profiles Can Now Appear In Google’s Knowledge Graph

    As some have noticed, Google has started displaying social media profiles in the Knowledge Graph area of search results pages for many brand searches. If you search for Wendy’s, for example, you can very clearly see links to their profiles on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+.

    The same holds true for Chase, Nike, Starbucks, and any other number of brands you can think of. This is good news for consumers who wish to engage with brands, without sifting through search results trying to find the appropriate channel. This makes them very easy to find.

    It’s also good for businesses for that very same reason, and the even better news is that it’s not limited to major brands like those mentioned. Google is offering businesses markup to enable the search engine to display social profiles for their brands.

    Google’s Zineb Ait Bahajji made the announcement on Google+ (via Search Engine Land):


    In case you didn’t feel like clicking to expand that post, supported profiles include Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Myspace. That’s right. You can even proudly display your Myspace profile. Google says it encourages you to specific additional social profiles as well, but for now, they won’t appear in the Google search results the way the others do.

    Google says its algorithms process the social profiles yo specify, and display the most relevant ones based on individual user queries, so people won’t always necessarily see the same ones. It’s also worth noting that Google will only show verified profiles for sites that have a verification process. That’s not good news for brands wanting to display their Twitter profiles, as Twitter is notoriously stingy about handing out verifications.

    You can find the documentation for setting up your structured markup here.

  • Google Makes It Easier For People To Search For Your Content

    Google announced that it’s now showing a new and improved sitelinks search box within search results, which will make it easier to find specific content on third-party websites from Google itself.

    The box is more prominent, and supports autocomplete. Here’s what it looks like for YouTube:

    You can mark up your own site so that Google has the ability to display a similar functionality for your content. Google explains:

    You need to have a working site-specific search engine for your site. If you already have one, you can let us know by marking up your homepage as a schema.org/WebSite entity with the potentialAction property of theschema.org/SearchAction markup. You can use JSON-LD, microdata, or RDFa to do this; check out the full implementation details on our developer site.

    If you implement the markup on your site, users will have the ability to jump directly from the sitelinks search box to your site’s search results page. If we don’t find any markup, we’ll show them a Google search results page for the corresponding site: query, as we’ve done until now.

    More on the markup can be found on Google’s Developers site.

    Image via Google

  • Schema.org Enters Its ‘Next Chapter’

    Schema.org Enters Its ‘Next Chapter’

    In 2011, Google, Microsoft (Bing) and Yahoo, the big three search engines (Yandex later joined), teamed up to launch Schema.org, an initiative to support a common set of schemas for structured data markup on webpages.

    This week, the companies announced the introduction of vocabulary to let sites describe actions they enable and how said actions can be invoked.

    “When we launched schema.org almost 3 years ago, our main focus was on providing vocabularies for describing entities — people, places, movies, restaurants, … But the Web is not just about static descriptions of entities. It is about taking action on these entities — from making a reservation to watching a movie to commenting on a post,” says a blog post from Google’s Jason Douglas and Sam Goto, Microsoft’s Steve Macbeth and Jason Johnson, Yandex’s Alexander Shubin, and Yahoo’s Peter Mika.

    They refer to the new vocabulary as “the next chapter of schema.org and structured data on the web.”

    “The new actions vocabulary is the result of over two years of intense collaboration and debate amongst the schema.org partners and the larger Web community,” they write. “Many thanks to all those who participated in these discussions, in particular to members of the Web Schemas and Hydra groups at W3C. We are hopeful that these additions to schema.org will help unleash new categories of applications.”

    A couple years ago, Google’s Matt Cutts put out a video discussing schema.org markup as a ranking signal.

    “Just because you implement schema.org doesn’t mean you necessarily rank higher,” he said. “But there are some corner cases like if you were to type in ‘lasagna,’ and then click over on the left-hand side and click on ‘recipes,’ that’s the sort of thing where using schema.org markup might help, because then you’re more likely to be showing up in that at all. So there are some cases where it can be helpful to use schema.org markup.”

    Here’s an overview document that covers what exactly is changing.

    In February, Schema.org introduced sorts vocabulary. A couple months prior to that, it announced markup for TV and radio.

    Via SemanticWeb

    Image via Schema.org

  • Google Wants To Get Better At Indexing Your Business Info

    Google has released some recommendations for webmastesr to help them get the search engine to identify and surface business info like phone numbers, business locations, and opening hours. They also launched support for schema.org to help specify preferred phone numbers using structured data markup.

    “Many people also turn to Google to find and discover local businesses, and the best information is often on a website’s contact us or branch locator page. These location pages typically include the address of the business, the phone number, opening hours, and other information,” says Google in a blog post.

    “In addition to building great location pages, businesses are encouraged to continue using Places for Business, which is a fast and easy way to update your information across Google’s service such as Google Maps, the Knowledge Graph and AdWords campaigns,” it adds.

    You can find the recommendations for location pages for local businesses and organizations here. It goes into how to have each location’s info accessible, how to let Googlebot discover, crawl and index location pages, Havascript and other page assets, how location info should be presented, and using schema.org markup.

    Schema.org supports four types of phone numbers: customer service, technical support, billing support, bill payment. For each one, you must indicate if it’s toll-free, suitable for the hearing-impaired, and whether it’s global or only for specific countries. More on all this here.

    Image via Google

  • Google Knowledge Graph Takes Tour Dates From Artists’ Official Sites

    Google announced today that it will now populate its Knowledge Graph results for musicians with tour dates from the artists’ official websites when they add structured data markup.

    Google has shown upcoming events for artists for quite some time (and even has reminders for artists’ releases), but now they’re getting the information directly from the source.

    “When music lovers search for their favorite band on Google, we often show them a Knowledge Graph panel with lots of information about the band, including the band’s upcoming concert schedule,” says product manager Justin Boyan. “It’s important to fans and artists alike that this schedule be accurate and complete. That’s why we’re trying a new approach to concert listings.”

    It’s good to know that Google is doing more to make sure info in the Knowledge Graph is accurate. We’ve seen too many times when it was not (granted, I’m not sure how bad it’s been with tour dates).

    Google is encouraging webmasters of musical artists’ sites to implement schema.org markup, install an events widget that has structured data markup built in (like those from Bandsintown, BandPage, ReverbNation, Songkick, or GigPress), or label the site’s events with Google’s data highlighter tool.

    For everyone else, this simply serves as a reminder that Google likes structured data, and it’s probably worth it to your site to make use of it where applicable too.

    Image via Google

  • Google Notifies Webmasters Of Manual Actions Regarding ‘Spammy Structured Markup’

    Google wants you to use structured data markup on your site to give it better information, and help it make more compelling search results.

    “If Google understands the markup on your pages, it can use this information to add rich snippets and other features to your search result,” the company explains. “For example, the search snippet for a restaurant might show its average review and price range. You can add structured data to your page using the schema.org vocabulary and formats such as Microdata and RDF, alongside other approaches such as Microformats. You can also add structured data by tagging the data on your page using Data Highlighter.”

    Google doesn’t, however, want you to use this markup in spammy ways, which people have obviously been doing.

    Google is now reportedly sending webmasters abusing rich snippet markup notifications of manual actions taken on their sites. Search Engine Roundtable points to a Google Webmaster Help forum post where one webmaster shared a message they received:

    Spammy structured markup
    Markup on some pages on this site appears to use techniques such as marking up content that is invisible to users, marking up irrelevant or misleading content, and/or other manipulative behavior that violates Google’s Rich Snippet Quality guidelines.

    The webmaster who posted it said his team couldn’t find the issue. Suggestions from others in the discussion included marking up his name as the author in three different ways on a page, marking up things that aren’t visible on the page, marking up one item as both an article and a blog post, marking up empty space in the footer, and marking up a Facebook page as a publisher of the webpage.

    Maybe we’ll get a Matt Cutts video on the subject soon.

    Image via Google

  • Cutts: Use Schema Video Markup For Pages With Embedded YouTube Videos

    Cutts: Use Schema Video Markup For Pages With Embedded YouTube Videos

    There is a lot of webmaster interest these days in the impact schema markup has on content in search results.

    Today’s Webmaster Help video from Google addresses video markup. Matt Cutts takes on the following submitted question:

    Rich snippets are automatically added to SERPs for video results from YouTube. Is it recommended to add schema video markup onsite in order to get your page w/embedded video to rank in SERPs in addition to the YouTube result or is this redundant?

    Cutts says he checked with a webmaster trends analyst, and they said, “Yes, please get them to add the markup.”

    He says, “In general, you know, the more markup there is (schema, video or whatever), the easier it is for search engines to be able to interpret what really matters on a page. The one thing that I would also add is, try to make sure that you let us crawl your JavaScript and your CSS so that we can figure out the page and ideally crawl the video file itself, so that we can get all the context involved. That way if we can actually see what’s going on on the video play page, we’ll have a little bit better of an idea of what’s going on with your site. So yes, I would definitely use the schema video markup.”

    There you have it. The answers Cutts gives in these videos aren’t always so straight forward, but this pretty much gives you a direct answer, and one which can no doubt be applied to other types of content beyond video. Use as much markup as you can, so Google (and other search engines) can understand your site better.

  • Google Gives Webmasters Alternative To Markup With Data Highlighter

    Google announced the launch of Data Highlighter in Webmaster Tools, a tool for event data (and soon other types of data) that gives them an alternative to having to markup their sites. It lets webmasters show Google pieces of data on a typical event page on their site for use in Google’s structured data offerings in search results (like rich snippets and event calendars), by simply pointing and clicking.

    “If your page lists multiple events in a consistent format, Data Highlighter will ‘learn’ that format as you apply tags, and help speed your work by automatically suggesting additional tags,” explains product manager Justin Boyan. “Likewise, if you have many pages of events in a consistent format, Data Highlighter will walk you through a process of tagging a few example pages so it can learn about their format variations. Usually, 5 or 10 manually tagged pages are enough for our sophisticated machine-learning algorithms to understand the other, similar pages on your site.”

    Data Highlighter

    “When you’re done, you can review a sample of all the event data that Data Highlighter now understands,” he adds. “If it’s correct, click ‘Publish.’”

    After you do all of this, Google will recognize your latest event listings and make them eligible for enhanced search results anytime it crawls your site.

    The tool can be found under “Optimization” in Webmaster Tools. For now, it’s only available in English, but more languages, as well as data types, will be added soon.

  • Matt Cutts On Schema.org Markup As A Ranking Signal

    In 2011, Google teamed up with Microsoft and Yahoo to launch schema.org, an initiative to support a common set of schemas for structured data markup. You might wonder whether or not implementing these schemas may influence your ranking in Google (or the other search engines, for that matter).

    Google’s Matt Cutts posted a new Webmaster Help video talking about this, responding to a user-submitted question:

    I know rich snippets can increase CTR for my mention on a SERP. But is the use of schema.org code beneficial for my actual positions on the SERPs as well?

    “On one hand, I wouldn’t necessarily count on that….Just because you implement schema.org doesn’t mean you necessarily rank higher. But there are some corner cases like if you were to type in ‘lasagna,’ and then click over on the left-hand side and click on ‘recipes,’ that’s the sort of thing where using schema.org markup might help, because then you’re more likely to be showing up in that at all. So there are some cases where it can be helpful to use schema.org markup.”

    “I wouldn’t necessarily count on that giving you any sort of ranking boost…I’m not going to take it off the table, but for example, it might make sense in some of those specific topic areas, but just because somebody implements schema.org markup, that doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily and automatically a better site, so I wouldn’t count on that giving you a good ranking boost, although it can be a good idea to markup things in a rich structure just because, you know, then different people can slice and dice and find your site more easily if they are doing more digging.”

    Let’s put it this way: it seems unlikely that it will hurt your rankings.

  • Pagination: Google Goes More In Depth On SEO And The Markup

    Back in September, Google introduced new markup for paginated content in an effort to return single-page versions of content in search results, when the content is broken up among multiple page. This would include things like multiple-page articles and slideshows.

    The markup is rel=”next” and rel=”prev”.

    Google says users usually prefer the single page format, and as a consumer of content, you probably agree in most cases. But tt’s worth noting that the markup isn’t an absolute must. Even Google acknowledges that there are times when paginated content makes sense. Sometimes single-page versions can load slowly, for example.

    Google Developer Programs Tech Lead Maile Ohye says, “Remember that if you have paginated content, it’s fine to leave it as-is and not add rel=”next” and rel=”prev” markup at all.”

    She created a video going more in depth on using the markup.

    She has actually put together a 37-page slideshow on the subject as well:

    Keep in mind, if you’re in e-commerce, this all applies to you too. It’s not just about writing articles and creating slidehsows. It could very well include product categories that span multiple pages.

    Google does say that using the markup provides “a strong hint” that pages should be treated as a “logical sequence”.

    By the way, notice that in the video, we have another Googler using a Mac.

  • Google Supports New Markup for Multilingual Content

    Google is supporting a new markup for multilingual content. It’s designed to improve handling of the following two scenarios, as described by the company:

    Multiregional websites using substantially the same content. Example: English webpages for Australia, Canada and USA, differing only in price

    Multiregional websites using fully translated content, or substantially different monolingual content targeting different regions. Example: a product webpage in German, English and French

    The support is an expansion of the rel=”alternate” hreflang link element. Google says it has expanded it to handle content that is translated or provided for multiple geogrhapic regions.

    “The hreflang attribute can specify the language, optionally the country, and URLs of equivalent content,” the company explains on the Webmaster Central blog. “By specifying these alternate URLs, our goal is to be able to consolidate signals for these pages, and to serve the appropriate URL to users in search. Alternative URLs can be on the same site or on another domain.”

    You can always use re=”canonical” for pages that have the same content in the same language that are aimed at different countries.

    “We’ll use that signal to focus on that version in search, while showing the local URLs to users where appropriate,” the company says. “For example, you could use this if you have the same product page in German, but want to target it separately to users searching on the Google properties for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.”

    Google looks at some examples of when to use the new markup here. They also have a help center article about the markup here.

  • Google Launches Rich Snippets for Music

    Google announced that it has launched rich snippets for music. This allows webmasters to mark up pages using the music markup to allow search results to display song info in the snippet.

    The feature is already being utilized by MySpace, Rhapsody and ReverbNation. Search results would look something like this:

    Music Snippet

    “As with other rich snippet formats, implementing the markup does not guarantee that your site will be displayed with the UI shown above on a given search; a variety of factors affect whether a particular rich snippet type will appear in our search results. However, having correct markup is a prerequisite for music rich snippets to ever be displayed,” says Associate Product Manager Gideon Wald.

    Schema.org offers a set of guidelines for MusicRecording Markup:

    Music Markup

    Schema.org was announced by Google, Bing and Yahoo earlier this year as an initiative to support a common set of schemas for structured data markup.

    “For now, music rich snippets will display song information when users search for artists, album names or song names,” says Wald. “We’ll continue working both on expanding our existing rich snippets formats and on creating new ones, so keep watching for updates about new types of content that you can surface for users right in your site’s snippets.”

    Google offers a rich snippets testing tool here.

  • Google, Bing, and Yahoo Work Together on Search

    Google, Bing, and Yahoo Work Together on Search

    Bing, Google and Yahoo have teamed up to announce schema.org, an initiative to support a common set of schemas for structured data markup on web pages.

    A representative for Bing tells WebProNews, “Over the past two years, Bing has worked to improve the search experience to better reflect both the evolving Web and changing consumer habits.”

    ” While this effort has a major ‘geek factor,’ it serves as quite a significant advancement for both the search industry and consumers,” he said.

    The site will provide tips and tools for helping sites appear in search results. “It will also help search engines better understand websites, and moving forward, Bing will work jointly with the larger web community and its search partners to extend the available schema categories,” the representative says. “Consumers will also benefit from this effort by experiencing richer search experiences and content from a much broader set of publishers.”

    “At Google, we’ve supported structured markup for a couple years now. We introduced rich snippets in 2009 to better represent search results describing people or containing reviews. We’ve since expanded to new kinds of rich snippets, including products, events, recipes, and more,” says Google’s search quality team. “Adoption by the webmaster community has grown rapidly, and today we’re able to show rich snippets in search results more than ten times as often as when we started two years ago.”

    “We want to continue making the open web richer and more useful. We know that it takes time and effort to add this markup to your pages, and adding markup is much harder if every search engine asks for data in a different way,” the team adds. “That’s why we’ve come together with other search engines to support a common set of schemas, just as we came together to support a common standard for Sitemaps in 2006. With schema.org, site owners can improve how their sites appear in search results not only on Google, but on Bing, Yahoo! and potentially other search engines as well in the future.”

    The search engines also worked together to support the canonical tag.

    Here’s what the schema.org site itself says:

    This site provides a collection of schemas, i.e., html tags, that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search providers. Search engines including Bing, Google and Yahoo! rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier for people to find the right web pages.

    Many sites are generated from structured data, which is often stored in databases. When this data is formatted into HTML, it becomes very difficult to recover the original structured data. Many applications, especially search engines, can benefit greatly from direct access to this structured data. On-page markup enables search engines to understand the information on web pages and provide richer search results in order to make it easier for users to find relevant information on the web. Markup can also enable new tools and applications that make use of the structure.

    A shared markup vocabulary makes easier for webmasters to decide on a markup schema and get the maximum benefit for their efforts. So, in the spirit of sitemaps.org, Bing, Google and Yahoo! have come together to provide a shared collection of schemas that webmasters can use.

    Google says it has added over 100 new types and ported all existing types of rich snippets. Where in the past it has supported three different standards for structured data markup, they will no only focus on microdata. Google says it will continue to support existing rich snippet markup formats. They also provide a testing tool for markup here.

    Bing also says that while it accepts a wide variety of markup formats, it is working to simplify the choices for webmasters.