Sitebulb audits structured data from two perspectives, which take the form of Schema Validation and Google Search Features Validation. This page focuses on Google Search Features validation, but you can find out more about Schema validation in our guide to Schema validation.
Google is increasingly using structured data to enable search result features, enhancements and rich results. Sitebulb’s Google search features validation helps ensure that your structured data meets Google’s criteria to be eligible for inclusion in these enhanced search results.
When doing an audit with structured data functionality enabled, Sitebulb looks for structured data on each page. When structured data is found, if it is a type supported by Google, checks are carried out to validate it against Google’s structured data guidelines.
The validation checks fall into two main areas:
Note that Sitebulb validates against Google’s technical guidelines. For obvious reasons, we’re unable to check that structured data complies with their quality guidelines. However, in addition to technical validation, we recommend that you familiarise yourself with these qualitative guidelines to ensure your structured data complies and avoids issues.
Google search features errors and warnings are the messages that Sitebulb returns when it finds structured data which does not comply with Google’s structured data specification and guidelines.
Errors - These are issues which must be fixed, according to Google's guidelines, to be eligible for Google search features. For example, missing ‘required’ properties or invalid data values.
Warnings - These issues aren’t as serious as errors and should be considered to be suggestions of opportunities to optimise your structured data. They shouldn’t impact your eligibility for search features and rich results but can reduce your chances of receiving them or impact how your structured data is displayed. Examples of warnings could be missing ‘recommended’ properties or high resolution images.
Below is a list of all of the Google Search Feature validation error types which can be triggered when carrying out a structured data audit using Sitebulb. These errors should be addressed in order to be eligible for Google’s Search features and rich results.
For each schema type, Google provides a list of ‘required properties’ and a list of ‘recommended properties’.
This error indicates that one of the required properties for your entity is missing. All of the required properties for an entity must be provided in order for the structured data to be eligible for Google’s rich results.
Use Google’s guidelines for individual structured data types to find the recommended properties available for each type.
When defining a value for the ‘Country’ property the correct format must be used.
See the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 wikipedia page for a list of valid country codes.
This error relates to Product structured data markup.
For all Product type entities, one of the following properties must be used:
Although it is a requirement to use at least one of these properties, Google also recommends using multiple or all of them where applicable.
This error relates to the ‘name’ property for all Schema entity types.
The error indicates that the entity name contains HTML code. Entity names should not include HTML.
This error relates to Breadcrumb structured data markup.
Breadcrumbs are made up of a number of at least two ListItems. Each of the ListItems will contain a ‘position’ property. The value of the ‘position’ property for the first ListItem must always be set to ‘1’.
This error relates to Breadcrumb structured data markup.
Breadcrumbs are made up of a number of at least two ListItems. Each of the ListItems will contain a ‘position’ property which will contain a number. The ListItems must be in consecutive order based on their ‘position’ value (i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc).
This error indicates that your breadcrumb item positions are currently out of sequence.
This error relates to Software App structured data markup.
applicationCategory is a recommended property for the SoftwareApplication Schema type. If this property is included in your markup, the value must match one of supported software app types, as listed by Google.
This error relates to Sitelinks search box structured data markup.
The SearchAction entity must be nested inside a WebSite entity.
This error relates to Review Snippet structured data markup.
The review must be associated with a supported type. See Google’s documentation for types supported for review snippets.
The value used within the URL property must be a valid URL.
Check to ensure that you’ve used a full, absolute URL (e.g. https://www.example.com).
This error relates to Job Training structured data markup.
Price property values must be a decimal number.
This error relates to recommended properties for the Course structured data type.
If the ‘provider’ property is used, it should be set as ‘Organization’ type.
This error refers to Job Training structured data markup.
For Job Training Schema types (including EducationalOccupationalProgram, WorkBasedProgram, and EducationalOrganization) at least one contactPoint type should be set to ‘Admissions’ (you may have multiple contact points).
This error refers to Event structured data markup.
Ensure that your event startDate, endDate, and previousStartDate properties all follow Google’s date and time guidelines for events.
The startDate and endDate cannot have times of 00:00:00 or 23:59:59.
Google also provides some troubleshooting advice for diagnosing incorrect times and dates here.
This error refers to Event structured data markup.
The location name should not match the event name.
Follow Google’s guidelines on how the location name property should be used.
This error refers to Event structured data markup.
If an event is rescheduled and the previousStartDate property is used, then the eventStatus property must be set to EventRescheduled.
This error refers to Estimated Salary structured data markup using the Occupation Schema type.
The occupationLocation property should be set as a City, State, or Country type.
This error refers to Estimated Salary structured data markup using the Occupation Schema type.
The estimatedSalary property must be set as MonetaryAmountDistribution type.
This error refers to Q&A structured data markup using the QAPage Schema type.
The same answer must not be used as both an acceptedAnswer or suggestedAnswer. This error is triggered when two answers are using the same text.
This error refers to Q&A structured data markup using the QAPage Schema type.
The answerCount property should be used to indicate the total number of answers to the question.
This error is triggered when the AnswerCount property has a value greater than zero and there are no answers with the question entity. The AnswerCount property must be set to zero if the page contains no answers.
This error refers to Q&A structured data markup using the QAPage Schema type.
The answerCount property should be used to indicate the total number of answers to the question.
This error is triggered when the AnswerCount property value does not match the number of answers found on the page.
The AnswerCount property value must match the number of answers found on the page. For example, if there are five Q&A answers marked-up with Schema on the page, then the AnswerCount property value must be '5'.
This error refers to Speakable structured data markup.
The error is triggered when the speakable entity contains both cssSelector and xPath properties. Only one of these properties should be used, not both.
Below is a list of all of the Google Search Feature validation warning types which can be triggered when carrying out a structured data audit using Sitebulb. Although the warnings should not affect eligibility for rich results in Google, they should be seen as an opportunity to optimise your structured data and increase chances of inclusion.
This warning indicates that there are recommended properties for this entity type which are currently missing.
Recommended properties are optional (i.e. they are not ‘required’ properties), but their inclusion can increase the likelihood of structured data appearing in Google’s search results with ‘enhanced display’.
Use Google’s guidelines for individual structured data types to explore the recommended properties available for each type.
Although using relative URLs works fine in most cases, they can sometimes cause issues.
For this reason, it’s best practice to always use absolute URLs.
Absolute URL example: https://www.website.com/example-page
Relative URL example: /example-page
This warning relates to Article, Event, Product and Recipe structured data markup.
For these entity types, Google recommends that high resolution images should be used to achieve the best results.
See Google’s documentation for guidelines on image specifications which should be used for each structured data type:
This property has been deprecated and is no longer recommended by Google.
See Google’s guidelines for individual structured data types for the current the recommended properties available for each type.
