Google has announced recent changes to how businesses and SEO experts have to add schema data to their pages and specifically business reviews as rich data on their websites. The new changes may influence and impact how businesses and marketing managers add structured data to their webpages, and Search Engine Page Results.
According to Search Engine Journal and other news outlets, Google said that new changes to business review schema markup includes new requirements and features that help to display accurate and rich review data for businesses. The new changes are likely to help businesses reflect their reviews in a way that limits deceitful and shady marketing tactics. Per Search Engine Journal:
In perhaps the biggest change to Reviews Rich Results is the mandatory requirement of the name property in the featured snippets.
Publishers who rely on schema structured data plugins, including Reviews WordPress Plugins, should check if their plugin is currently including the “name” property.
If the name property is not included with your plugin then look for an update to your plugin and update it. If there is no “name” update then it may be something your plugin maker has in a future update.
You may wish to contact your plugin maker to find out when this is coming because the “name” property is now important.
Additionally, Google said that certain pages or business schema data will be allowed after the final update. These include:
- schema.org/Book
- schema.org/Course
- schema.org/CreativeWorkSeason
- schema.org/CreativeWorkSeries
- schema.org/Episode
- schema.org/Event
- schema.org/Game
- schema.org/HowTo
- schema.org/LocalBusiness
- schema.org/MediaObject
- schema.org/Movie
- schema.org/MusicPlaylist
- schema.org/MusicRecording
- schema.org/Organization
- schema.org/Product
- schema.org/Recipe
- schema.org/SoftwareApplication
What does this mean for my businesses’ review data? How can I still leverage reviews for rich data?
Most businesses shouldn’t have any major difficulties publishing and adding vital structured data to their webpages anytime soon, but it could lead to more accuracy checks and compliance audits for webmasters and search marketers.
The new changes continue the search engine giant’s trend of improving usability and the quality of content, especially for Google Search users. The major rules that could impact businesses is that self-serving or self-reported reviews could impact the visibility of schema data on your website, including product pages and similar important landing pages.
If businesses believe they should look into the quality of their reviews and data markup, it may help to contact an expert on the matter that can align on-page SEO strategies with similar, high-ROI services. If you’re looking for a dedicated to help you with this, please learn more about Boston Web Marketing here!