Google releases Search Off Record episode on structured data. An interesting topic they talked about was how Google uses structured data beyond what Google’s developer pages recommend. More data is better, says Martin Splitt.
However, there are some caveats to adding more structured data beyond what Google recommends.
Structured data recommendations from Schema.org and Google
The relevant part of the podcast begins when Lizzi Sassman, technical writer in the Search Relations group, observes that structured data documentation on Schema.org is larger than documentation on Google’s developer help pages.
Google’s structured data recommendation uses only a fraction of all available structured data documented in Schema.org.
The structured data ecosystem is not just Google, and there are many uses for structured data beyond what Google recommends, and according to what Google shared in this podcast, there are some additional non-recommended structured data that Google can use, which is available at Google Recommended terms.
this The founding company behind Schema.org Yes:
- Microsoft
- Yahoo
- Yandex
However, there are key contributors from Drupal and many others in the larger web community.
So Schema.org and the structured data vocabulary they developed is far larger than what Google recommends for the essentially small amount of structured data.
Ryan Levering, a Google software engineer, agrees with how Schema.org contains a wider vocabulary of usable vocabulary than what Google uses.
Delivery Watch:
“So it’s just a way of expressing information.
…so it’s very broad and it has to take into account all the different use cases that might be used for it. “
Search relational technology writer Lizzi Sassman points out the infinite possibilities of Schema.org:
“The applications for this stuff could be limitless, or it’s like someone else could use it and say, ‘We need this type of information to do this. Or that’s the Google side, it adds ‘if we know this information’ , we can use it to do this.”
Google’s use of structured data
They go on to point out that the recommendations found on Google’s developer pages are limited in scope, but that Google may actually use structured data beyond its recommendations.
It’s important to note that the purpose of Google’s structured data recommendations is more or less to help publishers get rich results, making it easy for Google to identify which images to show in the rich results and which data to use in that context.
The next thing Googlers talked about was using structured data to help Google understand what a page was about.
This use goes beyond Google’s recommended purpose of displaying rich results, which John Mueller has mentioned in the past.
But this additional use of structured data is not officially documented.
So it’s kind of like, if you know it, then you can take advantage of it.
Google’s developer advocate Martin Splitt asked:
“…but is structured data useful beyond what we can use for some search capabilities such as rich results?”
Levering responded that Google may use structured data that is not recommended.
Ryan Leverage:
“We can use it for certain things at Google.
…I would never advise people not to put structured data on their web pages if it makes semantic sense.
…we also did a few things to get a general idea of the page’s theme. Sometimes the data you put in can get into it.
Now this is a very ML-like process where we look at all the text on the page and look at other things that are related to the page.
So structured data is just one signal in the whole computation.
But it helps us disambiguate what the actual page is about. So it’s useful, but now only in a more implicit sense. “
Non-recommended structured data may be an additional signal
Lizzi Sassman said the additional structured data can help Google better understand the content of the page.
Ryan Levering observed that without structured data, they might figure out what a web page is about.
But in some cases, it may be harder to know what the page is about, and additional structured data may be helpful.
Delivery Watch:
“So it’s hard to express in some of our reports and content that we actually think it’s useful. Because it’s a delicate calculation.
But we can use it as an extra signal when a problem is detected.
So usually in edge cases where we find these things useful. “
Martin Splitt commented how nice it would be if adding more data would help clarify the content of the page.
Split comments:
“It’s really cool, and I think it’s usually easy to say like more data, as long as it’s correct and reflects what’s shown to the user on the page, it’s never worse, right.
It would be better to add more data to clarify what is on the page. “
Implement “undocumented” structured data
The inherent caveat to what Martin Splitt says is that everything in structured data must also be in the visible part of the web page. When the content in the structured data doesn’t match the content in the visible part of the page, Google considers it spam.
Citation
Listen to Google Podcasts on YouTube at 11:56 minutes:
