Is Google microformats supposed to be visible on the web page?

Question

I was trying to add microformats as following to my webpage:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product">
  <span itemprop="brand">Company Name</span>
  <span itemprop="name">Product Name</span>
  <span itemprop="description">Product Description</span>
  Product #: <span itemprop="sku">12345</span>
</div>

I thought this microformat will only show up in a google search result page. But after adding it, those information became visible on my webpage, and not in a good shape.

Is there something wrong? Or should I use display:none to make it invisible on my webpage?

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 14 '15 at 09:39

Microformats are meant to add machine readable meaning to existing content on the page. They're not invisible meta data, they augment content that's already there. So, yes, it'll show up. You can hide or style it via any of the usual ways in which you hide or style content.

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

You are using Microdata, not Microformats.

Microdata is a syntax to include structured data within HTML5. Ideally you would use your existing content (i.e., add the needed attributes like itemprop etc. to your already existing markup), and only if that’s not possible, the hidden elements meta and link (which are allowed in the body if used for Microdata).

If you don’t want to use your existing markup and the visible content, you could use an alternative syntax: JSON-LD. This gets included as a data block (using the script element), which is not visible by default.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 14 '15 at 13:51

Don't try to use hide or style on your content, it will have a bad impact on your site. You might get penalized for cloaking if you practice it on all of your pages. If you are trying to mark/let the bots know about some more info that is not on your page you can try using either the Data Highlighter for simple things in you Search Engine Console (Webmaster Tools) or for more complicated stuff you can try using JSON-LD coding on you pages.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 14 '15 at 09:53

Microformats are HTML. Used to publish a standard API that is consumed and used by search engines, browsers, and other web sites. Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Microformats are a way to enable "smart scraping" of web pages, so that you can create tools and scripts that losslessly extract machine-readable information from cleanly-formatted, human-readable HTML. Structured Data is the name given to content which is marked up in a specific way, using MicroFormatting, to explain what that content is all about.

It is always recommended to show the Microdata information and not to hide it. You can probably try to give a good shape. It would show up in the Google and Bing result pages as well but you need to wait a little for that. There is nothing wrong with the Microformats applied by you. The thing is SEO need some more patience.

Is Google microformats supposed to be visible on the web page?

4 Answers4