Help with Schema & what's considered "Spammy structured markup"
-
Hello all!
I was wondering if someone with a good understanding of schema markup could please answer my question about the correct use so I can correct a penalty I just received.
My website is using the following schema markup for our reviews and today I received this message in my search console. UGH...
Manual Actions
This site may not perform as well in Google results because it appears to be in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
Site-wide matches Some manual actions apply to entire site
<colgroup><col class="JX0GPIC-d-h"><col class="JX0GPIC-d-x"><col class="JX0GPIC-d-a"></colgroup>
| | Reason | Affects |
| |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. Learn more. |
I have used the webmasters rich snippets tool but everything checks out. The only thing I could think of is my schema tag for "product." rather than using a company like tag? (https://schema.org/Corporation). We are a mortgage company so we sell a product it's called a mortgage so I assumed product would be appropriate.
Could that even be the issue? I checked another site that uses a similar markup and they don't seem to have any problems in SERPS. http://www.fha.com/fha_reverse shows stars and they call their reviews "store"
OR could it be that I added my reviews in my footer so that each of my pages would have a chance at displaying my stars?
All our reviews are independently verified and we just would like to showcase them. I greatly appreciate the feedback and had no intentions of abusing the markup.
From my site:
All Reverse Mortgage 4.9 out of 5 301 Verified Customer Reviews from eKomi| |
| | [https://www.ekomi-us.com/review-reverse.mortgage.html](<a class=)" rel="nofollow" title="eKomi verified customer reviews" target="_BLANK" style="text-decoration:none; font-size:1.1em;"> |
| | imgs/rating-bar5.png" /> |
| | |
| | All Reverse Mortgage |
| | |
| | |
| | 4.9 out of 5 |
| | 301 Verified Customer Reviews from eKomi |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | | -
No problem Cliff. I hope you found it helpful, and I'm happy to hear this has been cleared up for you. It's something I'll keep in mind if anyone else has a similar issue.
-
Welp! I just received an approval to my reconsideration request. So it turns out it is not wise to create a sitewide schema markup for your companies ratings. I guess each page should have its own unique markup and organization ratings belong on one page only.
Thank you guys for looking into this and giving me your feedback. -Cliff
-
I'm sorry to hear that and can understand your frustration. Sometimes the way Google treats legitimate businesses in certain hyper-competitive industries is unfortunate. You're guilty until proven innocent.
I did not see anything wrong with your code. Maybe the manual reviewer didn't clear their cache? Maybe they were looking at a different URL than me, which still had the product schema without a buy button. Aggregate rating is clearly documented as being compatible with the Organization Schema type, and is described as "The overall rating, based on a collection of reviews or ratings, of the item."
If this were my site the next thing I would try is removing the Schema from every page except your home page. Maybe someone else has experienced this first-hand and will respond with a more helpful answer.
-
Well I changed to organization after I received the notice of penalty and then after correcting my site I asked for a reconsideration and was denied stating that site still apears to be outside of webmaster guidelines with some type of spammy schema markup.
At a total loss. Schema markup produces no errors in testing against Google's rich snippet tool and the tag is no longer product.
-
Ain't that the truth.
A good rule of thumb might be: If there's a BUY button that adds an item on that page to a shopping cart, use Product schema on that page. If that buy button is on every page of your site for the same product, it's going to seam suspicious coming from anyone but a household brand.
-
Of course they show my stars on the adwords network no problem! Lol
-
Thank you so much for your feedback!
I changed my markup to organization rather than product and then asked for a reconsideration and was turned down without any specific reason except to refer to the Webmaster guidelines.
So I'm at a loss... Thankfully none of my rankings have moved but I am afraid I will never be able to show my reviews again.
-
I had it set before to product and then made the change to Organization
My markup is below. Then, I asked for a reconsideration stating I was unaware of the difference and showed that I made the change to Organization they denied my reconsideration. I am absolutely in the dark on this because the response is simply to refer to Webmaster guidelines and they don't give anything specific to what I am doing wrong to receive this manual penalty. I'm not completely panicking because my SERP rankings have not been affected by this but I am worried that I'll never be able to show review stars again.
| |
| | imgs/rating-bar5.png" style="vertical-align:middle;" /> |
| | [https://www.ekomi-us.com/review-reverse.mortgage.html](<a class=)" rel="nofollow" title="eKomi verified customer reviews" target="_BLANK" style="text-decoration:none; font-size:1.1em;"> |
| | |
| | All Reverse Mortgage |
| | |
| | |
| | 4.9 out of 5 |
| | 301 Verified Customer Reviews from eKomi |
| | | -
How do you know that wasn't it? I'm just curious so I can learn from it.
If you're using organization Schema, it should be OK to show on every page. If you're using Product schema it should only show on a page where they can buy the product.
-
Thanks for your feedback! Turns out that wasn't it. I wonder, could having this in a footer of my site which is trying to show ratings on all pages of my site considered to be the spammy part?
To: Webmaster of <a target="_blank">https://reverse.mortgage/</a>,
Google has reviewed your site in response to your reconsideration request. Based on this review, Google believes that your site still violates Google Webmaster Guidelines. To resolve all manual actions, review your site again, correct the necessary items, and file another reconsideration request.
How to fix this problem:
| 1 |
Review the violations on your site
Use the Manual Actions Viewer to identify what manual actions are applied to your site.
Fix any issues listed
Use the details in the Manual Actions Viewer to help you fix outstanding issues. If your site was hacked, use Security Issues to find more details.
|
| 3 |Submit a reconsideration request
Include any details or documentation that can help us understand the changes made to your site.
|
-
I think it may have to do, as you guessed, with the use of Product schema. You should try Organization schema. If you have an actual product landing page, with a price and Add to Cart button, that would be where you would put the Product schema, but only put reviews about the actual reverse mortgage product. Most of the reviews on the home page seem to be about the company as a whole.
-
I don't know the answer to your question. However, I can say that LOTS of sites have lost their review stars triggered by schema in the past couple of months. For some sites the stars "just disappeared" and other sites received "manual spam penalty" messages from Google with language similar to what you posted above.
Some companies who offer the review services are not helpful when contacted directly and asked what to do about the problem... and Google's response to reconsideration requests often contain no explicit information.
You are not alone. Google seems to think that webmasters should be able to divine meaning from their messages.
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
-
New Website's Not Ranking for Branded Term
Hey Friends, I can't seem to figure out why https://feello.com/ isn't ranking on Google for it's branded term (Feello). It's ranking in 1st position on Bing and Yahoo but on page 2 (16th or so) on Google. Going through the list and can't come up with an answer. Metadata: Yes Indexed to Webmaster: Yes, Fetched pages: Yes Google cache on May 27, 2017: Check Using canonical and redirecting for non-www and HTTPS version: Yes & Yes Feello in domain name: Yes Set up social profiles and GMB: Yes Driving traffic: Yes, some email and ads Checked robots.txt: Yes, not created yet Created and Submitted Sitemap: Yes - https version Checked for blocked resources: None. The list goes on...Any ideas would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GarrettDenham0 -
My "search visibility" went from 3% to 0% and I don't know why.
My search visibility on here went from 3.5% to 3.7% to 0% to 0.03% and now 0.05% in a matter of 1 month and I do not know why. I make changes every week to see if I can get higher on google results. I do well with one website which is for a medical office that has been open for years. This new one where the office has only been open a few months I am having trouble. We aren't getting calls like I am hoping we would. In fact the only one we did receive I believe is because we were closest to him in proximity on google maps. I am also having some trouble with the "Links" aspect of SEO. Everywhere I see to get linked it seems you have to pay. We are a medical office we aren't selling products so not many Blogs would want to talk about us. Any help that could assist me with getting a higher rank on google would be greatly appreciated. Also any help with getting the search visibility up would be great as well.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | benjaminleemd1 -
Is it possible to have organization markup schema for sub domain ? and how should it look like ?
Can we have organization markup schema for subdomain ? For example if my main domain is xyz.com and subdomain is sub.xyz.com If i plan to have organization markup schema for subdomain how should it look like ? Should the markup schema must have main domain url or sub domain url in markup schema ? Should it be like this ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NortonSupportSEO0 -
What can cause for a service page to rank in Google's Answer Box?
Hello Everyone, Have recently seen a Google result for "vps hosting" showing service page details in Answer Box. I would really like to know, what can cause a service page to appear in the Answer Box? Have attached a screenshot of result page. CaRiWtQUcAALn9n.png CaRiWtQUcAALn9n.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eukmark0 -
Correct Schema Markup
Hello, I've been having some markup issues and need some help. I researched what would be the best Business type and used that markup on the website. But when I check it in the testing tool I get this http://screencast.com/t/vtlfn2MNPKf It doesn't recognize the object type. Could this be an error with my website or the markup its self? Please advise Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rank-and-Grow0 -
Blocking Certain Site Parameters from Google's Index - Please Help
Hello, So we recently used Google Webmaster Tools in an attempt to block certain parameters on our site from showing up in Google's index. One of our site parameters is essentially for user location and accounts for over 500,000 URLs. This parameter does not change page content in any way, and there is no need for Google to index it. We edited the parameter in GWT to tell Google that it does not change site content and to not index it. However, after two weeks, all of these URLs are still definitely getting indexed. Why? Maybe there's something we're missing here. Perhaps there is another way to do this more effectively. Has anyone else ran into this problem? The path we used to implement this action:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jbake
Google Webmaster Tools > Crawl > URL Parameters Thank you in advance for your help!0 -
Site Structure: How do I deal with a great user experience that's not the best for Google's spiders?
We have ~3,000 photos that have all been tagged. We have a wonderful AJAXy interface for users where they can toggle all of these tags to find the exact set of photos they're looking for very quickly. We've also optimized a site structure for Google's benefit that gives each category a page. Each category page links to applicable album pages. Each album page links to individual photo pages. All pages have a good chunk of unique text. Now, for Google, the domain.com/photos index page should be a directory of sorts that links to each category page. Alternatively, the user would probably prefer the AJAXy interface. What is the best way to execute this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tatermarketing0 -
Alternative Markup Challenge. Can anyone help?
I have a challenge around alternative markup. We currently operate a single domain with geo-targeted folders and alternative markup implemented. We are now now looking to expand this out to non-English content. Current Implementation; All generic English language content hosted on the main domain, with x5 English language content variations (locales) available under a folder structure (.com/en-us/ etc.). Alternative markup is in place for all locales within the HTML, implemented automatically by developers via the CMS. Locale folders geo-targeted via GWT and Bing WT. Planned Launch; Introduction of 5 new non-English locale folders (e.g. /de-de/ etc.), targeted to their respective country and language. Content language will be mixed, with around 1/10 of pages translated and the other 9/10 of pages (business listings) having their body content remain in English, with headers / footers translated. Locale folders will be geo-targeted via GWT and Bing WT. Folder and markup usage TBC. Options; Folders; Implement folder structure /de/, attempting to indicate country but not language (issue; usually a single identifier indicates language, not country?). Implement /de-de/ folder structure to match the English locales and maintain correct country targeting (issue; some content is not in language). Alternative markup; Do not make use of markup at all. Implement CMS based automated markup on all English and non-English content throughout the locale (e.g. /de-de/), but exclude English language versions (e.g. /en-gb/). Attempt manually implementing markup to bridge the English and non-English locales, potentially creating future issues with new content going live and content being removed. A heavy risk. Current approach is webmaster tools targeting, a /de-de/ folder structure and automated implementation of markup. This means English language URLs will have markup and non-English language URLs will have markup, but they will not match up (e.g. English pages will never have markup for non-English language content). If you minds haven't melted, what's your thoughts? Any help is much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HelloAlba0