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I'm having trouble getting the Webmaster Tools rich snippet testing tool to properly return markup for schema.org's WebPageElement types.

http://schema.org/WebPageElement

Does anyone have a site that hosts this markup?

I'm looking for solutions for a website that has undesirable snippets returned on Google search. The website is an interactive library of slide presentations, with an advanced search function.

Many different search pages on this site are being dropped from the Google index every week. The snippet returned on these pages includes the navigation menu. There is no h1 tag and the first line of the navigation menu is in bold, so Google is identifying the menu as the main content of the page and returning this info in the search results.

I need Google to put the actual page content in the search results, to increase click through rate and resolve a probable duplicate content issue.

I thought it would be good to put an h1 tag on the site, and add schema for WebPageElement, SiteNavigationElement, WPHeader, WPFooter, and WebPage.

Does anyone have examples of this markup on their site?

In the past I've used the rich snippet tool and had it return error, and in every instance I found that my code did indeed contain an error, so I don't think it's the tool.

unor
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Cynthia Coffield
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  • I was having issues with this also, checked out the answer below for help but here is the hierarchy of code that I managed to get working... – Simon May 31 '13 at 08:10

3 Answers3

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I have implemented several of the schema.org WebPageElement types in http://gamesforkidsfree.net/en/ including siteNavigationElement

You can check how it is being recognized by Google in Rich Snippets Testing Tool.

Also in Google Webmaster Tools, there is a section to check this kind of markup at "Optimization / Structured Data", for this case it shows:

    Type                      Schema        Items    # Pages
    ---------------------------------------------------------
    ItemPage                  schema.org    109,657  6,866
    WPAdBlock                 schema.org    20,727   6,973
    SiteNavigationElement     schema.org    7,350    7,322
    WPHeader                  schema.org    7,319    7,319
    WPFooter                  schema.org    7,319    7,319
    WebPage                   schema.org    649      649

Regarding duplicate content you can have a look at one of the many Google support pages about canonicalization (isn't that duplicate content? :) e.g. canonicalization -> hints.

marcanuy
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It would be easier to answer if you could show the actual website or a SERP screenshot. By the way I don't think that your problem can be solved using that kind of markup since there is no evidence that Google supports it even if Schema.org is a Google initiative.

For what I understand you have two different kind of issues:

  1. Bad search snippets. Google shows in the search snippet a fragment of the on page text that is relevant to the user query. So what you see on the search snippet largely depends on the query you typed in the search box. If you see a piece of the navigation menu in the snippets it could be that there is no relevant text in the indexed page so Google does not have anything better to show than the text in the navigation menu
  2. Search pages being dropped from the Google index. This is a different, and more serious, problem. Are those "search pages" a good and relevant result compared to the other pages ranking for the query you are typing? Is the main topic of the page clear and explicit (remember that sometimes you nee to spoon-feed the search engines)? I'm giving you more questions than answers but, as I stated before, is not easy to diagnose a SEO problem without seeing the web site.
raben
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  • True, there is no documentation that Google supports the siteNavigationElement markup. I am wondering if anyone has an example of this markup. I work in SEO, so I'm familiar with the common ways to solve a problem where search pages are being dropped from the Google index. I was hoping this kind of markup could redirect the area Google was understanding as page content. These pages are part of an online interactive library, deep in the website, with much JavaScript. After I posted this I read that Google had made some changes to the search snippets. The problem has since corrected itself. – Cynthia Coffield Aug 21 '12 at 21:19
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All the above being said, google does show in its SERP when you define BREADCRUMP and schema.org as a whole is being made by the search engine giants so implementing it ensures some level of better understanding of the bots about your page. Search engines do not tell you everything they do but if you follow the main standards they produce together you pretty much ensure yourself good content availability within the SERPs.

You shouldn't count much on the impact from that though.

I suggest you focus mainly on pretty urls, canonical usage, title, description and proper implementation of schema.org itemprop for your main content type on the inner pages as well as H1 for your title.

Also try to render your main content as high as possible within the html and avoid splitting your title, summary and image… best case scenario they should be close to each other with H1, IMG and P elements and not be divided by divs, tables and so on.

You can have a look at this site http://svejo.net/1792774-protsesat-na-tsifrovizatsiya-v-balgariya-zapochva

It has a pretty good SEO on its article pages and shows up quite nicely and often in SERPs because of its on-page SEO.

I hope this helps you.

Yavor Ivanov
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