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Errors and warnings on Googles Structured Data Test Tool. What should I do?

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It seem that currently no single week passes by where Google does not change something on the Structured Data algorithm. More and more users a writing to me because they get errors and/or warnings on the Structured Data Test Tool or in the Search Console. This blogpost exists to clarify the difference of both.

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What’s new in version 2.7?

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Today I released version 2.7. In this version I mainly wanted to make the experience of using SNIP as smooth as possible. So I focused on the onboarding process a lot. But the update fixed some issues as well. Read more in this post.

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Google wants to see the url and priceValidUntil

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A few days ago some customers reported that Google now wants to see the url as well as the priceValidUntil properties for all Offers. Here is how you can deal with this.

Here are the exact warnings that Googles Structured Data Test Tools shows:

  • The priceValidUntil field is recommended. Please provide a value if available.
  • The url field is recommended. Please provide a value if available.
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What’s new in version 2.6?

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Another month went by and I’ve worked very hard to ship the next version. This was particular difficult for me because I haven’t got a lot of time to work on the code itself.

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How to generate a BreadcrumbList Schema

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A breadcrumb trail on a page indicates the page’s position in the site hierarchy. A user can navigate all the way up in the site hierarchy, one level at a time, by starting from the last breadcrumb in the breadcrumb list.

Google uses the BreadcrumbList Schema-Type to show it in search results. You can read more about that on Googles Reference Page. In this post I’ll show you how to generate a BreadcrumbList with SNIP – The Rich Snippets and Structured Data Plugin for WordPress.

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Should I fix the error on logo.height?

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A few customers recently reported that they’re getting errors for the Article snippet. Specifically on the ImageObject for the Organization sub-snippet. This is what I think Google is doing and how to fix it.

The Rich Snippets Test Tool shows that the logo.height is now an invalid property.
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How to install the Rich Snippets Plugin.

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Installing the plugin is super easy. After you have downloaded the plugin from CodeCanyon or (in case you bought it from me) right from this site, you just need to follow the steps below:

  1. Upload the rich-snippets-wordpress plugin folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
  2. Activate the Rich Snippets WordPress Plugin through the „Plugins“ menu in WordPress.
  3. Head to the „Rich Snippets“ menu that appears in your WordPress dashboard and click „Activation“. Enter your Envato purchase code end click the big blue „Let’s get started“ button.? If you don’t know where you can find your Envato purchase code, click here.
  4. Then click the „Global Snippets“ menu in your WordPress dashboard to manage global snippets.
  5. Or add your own snippets directly in your blog posts, pages or custom post types.

Quick start

Take the Structured Data Training. It’s free for all customers. It tells you every thing from:

  • What Structured Data is.
  • What Rich Snippets are.
  • How to use SNIP.

 

How to deactivate JSON+LD schema output of “The Events Calendar” plugin

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Google and other search engines are working heavily on schema.org integration. In the past, a lot of theme and plugin authors have integrated schema.org in their plugins but could not keep up with the speed of changes. So what I see happens a lot is that plugin and theme authors do not update their code accordingly. This is the case with the The Events Calendar plugin, too. It is missing some fields search engines want to see.

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Why you should not markup reviews from Yelp, Google Maps and others.

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Search Engine Land reported last month that it’s okay to post reviews from other sites (like Yelp, Google Maps, etc.) on your website. However you should not mark them up with schema.org structured data as this is against Googles guidelines. The reason is that the markup is reserved for reviews “directly produced by your site” and not copied from other sites.

So please keep that in mind when adding structured data to your reviews.

How does the licensing work?

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I’m a seller on Envato Market (CodeCanyon) so I’m bound to their license system. If you want to read more about their licensing, please go and read the information about the Standard License. They even have a FAQ page that should answer most of your questions as well.

The questions that I get most often are the following ones:

Do I need a a license for every single domain?

The short answer is yes. Even the extended license does not allow you to use it on multiple domains. As far as I know, Envato has no plans to changes this in the future.

Do I need multiple licenses if I’m on a multisite?

  • Yes, you need multiple licenses if every site on your multisite has its own domain name.
  • No, you don’t need multiple licenses if you’re using subfolders or subdomains for the multisites.

Version 2.4 has landed!

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Hey there. Finally, version 2.4.0 has arrived! Yey!

New filters for developers

The most important change is that developers now have the option to use the following filters to add custom JSON+LD data to each snippet:

  • wpbuddy/rich_snippets/rich_snippet/json+ld
  • wpbuddy/rich_snippets/rich_snippet/json+ld/value
  • wpbuddy/rich_snippets/rich_snippet/json+ld/value/{key}

With this, Global Snippets now have a new field that allows you to add value to the @id-value of the snippet.

Gutenberg

Another important milestone is that the plugin is officially compatible with Gutenberg (the new block editor that is coming with WordPress 5.0).

Other bugfixes

Several bugs have been fixed. For example it was not possible to properly select a single post or page from within the position metabox. This now works as it should be.

It was also not possible to rate feature requests. I’ve fixed this now as well.

How to add @id field to a snippet

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Since version 2.4.0 it’s now possible to add a customized @id-field to each global snippet. Just edit a global snippet and scroll down to the JSON+LD metabox as shown below.

WordPress Metabox with a field for the @id value of a snippet
Edit the @id value.

Normally, search engines expect an URL with a hashtag here. So you can add the {url} placeholder to replace it with the current page URL. For example, if the snippet get’s included into the page https://this-is-my.site/whatever/ and you define the @id value as {url}#product then the full @id value would be https://this-is-my.site/whatever/#product.

Is the plugin up-to-date?

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A question that I get asked from to time to time is if the plugin gets updated regularly. The answer is yes! The plugin exists since 2011 and it seems that it’s not going anywhere soon! 😉

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Is the plugin multisite-friendly?

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Kind of. If you activate the plugin network-wide you have to setup each site separately. There is no “global schema page” that are included on all network-sites at once.

Do you offer a setup service?

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Customers asked if I offer kind of a service to setup schema.org for them. Unfortunately I can’t do this at the moment as I want my energy to get into the improvement of the plugin itself. However I’m here for support questions and I’m very happy to assist you with any questions that might pop up.

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What Schema Markup is supported?

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This plugin allows you to add every single schema markup found on schema.org. Here is a complete list that shows all markups on one page.

Plus: the plugin allows you to add schemas from the hosted extensions that are not officially part of the main syntax. You can find a complete list on this page.

Here is a complete list, of schema classes / schema types the plugin:

Does the plugin add content to each website page?

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The answer to this questions (obviously) is yes as we have to output readable structured data so that search engines can read it.

However the data that is outputted is not visible to the end user. It’s only readable by search engines.

If you would view the sourcecode of one of your pages, you would find lines starting with something that looks like this:

<script data-snippet_id="snip-59a6a8000b284" type="application/ld+json">...</scrtip>

The data that can be found between these lines is the actual structured data that is formatted in JSON+LD format.

Can I create a star rating system with this plugin?

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SNIP, the Structured Data Plugin for WordPress allows you to create Rich Snippets that produce stars in search results. However it does not allow your users to rate your blog post as it’s not a rating plugin. That means it has no built-in rating system that counts automatically.

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Planned maintenance from our Web Hosting Provider

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Hey customers! Today our web hosting provider told us that there will be a planned maintenance between July, 09 and July, 10 around 11 pm and 5 am CEST. So it might be that our server will not be available for up to 60 minutes during that time. That means that the Rich Snippets WordPress plugin will maybe not work as expected as it needs to load some data for your snippets from our servers.

Sorry for that inconvenience.

Planned maintenance from our Web Hosting Provider

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Hey customers! Today our web hosting provider told us that there will be a planned maintenance between May, 22 and May, 24 around 11 pm and 5 am CEST. So it might be that our server will not be available for about 30 minutes during that time. That means that the Rich Snippets WordPress plugin will maybe not work as expected as it needs to load some data for your snippets from our servers. Sorry for that inconvenience.

How to build a proper LocalBusiness Rich Snippet

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Jayne sent me an email today. She wanted to know how to properly build a Rich Snippet for Businesses. She wrote that her competitor has stars in his search results and she wants to do the same but don’t know how it works. Jayne, I’m here to help. So please read on! Continue reading →

What’s new in version 2.3.1?

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Hey folks! Version 2.3.1 is primarily a maintenance release:

  • I’ve fixed some issues regarding the 5-star and 100-points rating. It didn’t really work when a rating-property has initially been added.
  • I also did a rollback on the design as the non-table-layout confused people (not only you or your neighbor but also myself).
  • Last but not least I’ve added two new examples that get installed automatically on plugin-activation. These are:
    • an example for a Product snippet when using WooCommerce
    • an example for a Review snippet for a product.

Have fun with it!