Structured Data - Change History & Alerts

The Product documentation includes the recommended property of gtin (Global Trade Identification Number) as an applicable global identifier. Google added the gtin12 property, which apparently had been supported previously, so this is a documentation change only. They also clarified that you can use the generic gtin property for all GTINs, but they recommend that you use the most specific one if possible.

The Product documentation includes the recommended property of gtin (Global Trade Identification Number) as an applicable global identifier. Google updated the documentation to clarify that the GTIN value must be in the numerical form, as they do not support the URL form for GTINs.

Google added quite a significant amount of new documentation for the Product search feature, clarifying how you can explicitly define the pros and cons of a product, which can then show up in the search results as an enhancement.

Currently only editorial product review pages are eligible for the pros and cons appearance in Search, not merchant product pages or customer product reviews.

Google modified their documentation to clarify that you must mark up at least three courses to be eligible for the Course rich result;

• The courses can be on separate detail pages, or in an all-in-one page.
• You must add Carousel markup to either a summary page or an all-in-one page (and they now provide an example for each of these).

This is not a new requirement; it was previously only documented in the Carousel documentation.

One of the required properties for JobPosting is jobLocation, and Google have just updated their documentation to clarify that you must also include the addressCountry property.

Google updated their documentation for the Product rich result, to clarify that Product rich results are only supported for pages that focus on a single product - including product variants where each product variant has a distinct URL.

This is a brand new rich result for websites that provide academic educational videos, aimed at helping students and teachers find learning-based video content.

Examples of acceptable content types include:

• Concept overview: The video is explaining a topic or concept.
• Problem walkthrough: The video shows the method or steps to solve an academic problem, such as a math or science word problem.
• Real life application: The video shows how a concept is applied or used in real life.
• Activity: The video shows a demonstration or application of a learning activity, such as an example, an improv game, a concept map, a peer review, or a forced debate.
• Science experiment: The video shows a science experiment.
• Lecture: The video shows a class, lecture, or webinar.
• How-to: The video provides a method or series of steps to do something. For video that are solving procedural STEM problems, use the Problem walkthrough type.
• Tips: The video is sharing tips and tricks.
• Professional learning: The video teaches skills related to job training.

The Learning Video rich result is available in English in all regions where Google Search is available. The feature is only available when searching for academic learning content on desktop and mobile.

This is a brand new rich result for websites that provide educational content, in addition to the Practice problems and Math solvers rich results added in March 2021. If you have flashcard pages, you can help students better find answers to educational questions by adding Quiz structured data to your flashcard pages. Adding structured data makes your content eligible to appear in the Education Q&A carousel in Google Search results, Google Assistant, and Google Lens results.

The Education Q&A carousel is available in English in all regions where Google Search is available. The feature is only available when searching for education-related topics on desktop and mobile.

Changes to the Core section:

• Fixed incorrect longitude value for Empire State Building in example eg-0005.
• Added gameEdition for VideoGame by analogy with bookEdition.

Additionally, changes made to the 'Pending' section.

Google updated the 'register your interest' form, where online retailers and libraries can apply for participation in the Book Action Google Search feature.

Google added a small note to the structured data type definitions for Product, to clarify how to markup a Car:

"Currently Car is not supported automatically as a subtype of Product. So for now, you will need to include both Car and Product types if you would like to attach ratings to it and be eligible for the Search feature."

Google updated their documentation for the Recipe search feature, changing the descriptions for three recommended properties: cookTime, prepTime and totalTime.

In the descriptions for these properties, this sentence has been removed: 'You can use min and max as child elements to specify a range of time.'

Currently, the only supported method is an exact time; time ranges aren't supported. If you're currently specifying a time range and you'd like Google to better understand your time values, they recommend updating that value in your structured data to a single value (for example, "cookTime": "PT30M").

Not announced by Google, they made additions in multiple places to the Job Posting documentation, to add greater clarity in terms of how to use certain properties:

• hiringOrganization - If the organization is hiring anonymously (for example, a staffing agency on behalf of an anonymous employer or an employer directly on your platform), use the confidential value.
• directApply - You likely offer a direct apply experience if the job posting includes instructions on how to apply (for example, the job posting lists the email address, phone number, or physical address where they can submit the application) or directly schedule an interview with an employer. These instructions must be for directly contacting the actual company hiring for the job, or their representative.

They also added clarification under the section 'Content doesn't match the structured data':

"Another example is when the job salary is in the markup but not on the job page. This is also a violation of the content guidelines, as all information in the markup must be visible on the job page."

Google added an additional guideline for the required logo property in their documentation, stating the following:

"Make sure the image looks how you intend it to look on a purely white background (for example, if the logo is mostly white or gray, it may not look how you want it to look when displayed on a white background)."

Updated Logo documentation to support new flexibility in using the ImageObject type to specify an organization logo.

Google have removed description from their list of recommended properties, stating that it is "unused by Google Search" and that the Rich Result Test doesn't flag warnings for it.

Google have removed the properties below from their recommended list, stating that they are "unused by Google Search" and that the Rich Result Test doesn't flag warnings for them.

• mainEntity.suggestedAnswer.author
• mainEntity.dateCreated
• mainEntity.suggestedAnswer.dateCreated
• mainEntity.acceptedAnswer.author
• mainEntity.acceptedAnswer.dateCreated
• mainEntity.author

Google have removed the properties below from their recommended list, stating that they are "unused by Google Search" and that the Rich Result Test doesn't flag warnings for them.

• provider
• audience
• serviceType
• address
• category

Google removed validThrough from its list of required properties for the Job Posting rich result, and added it to the recommended properties list.

Google added a requirement that the author.name field in Review snippets must be less than 100 characters to be eligible for use in Search features.

Google updated their documentation to add a clarification that they will not show a rich result for Software Apps that only have the VideoGame type. To ensure that your Software App is eligible for display as a rich result, you need to co-type the VideoGame type with another type.

For example: ["VideoGame", "MobileApplication"]

A long time coming, Google's Structured Data Testing Tool (SDTT) is no longer publicly accessible, as the page now redirects to a landing page that encourages you to choose between the Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator.

• Rich Results Test - this is the official tool for testing your structured data to see if it is valid for Google rich results, but does not check structured data that Google does not support.
• Schema Markup Validator - this is a 'refocused' version of the original SDTT, migrated onto the schema.org domain, which will validate against Schema.org, but does not validate Google rich results. This tool is officially still in beta, however Google claim it has now 'stabilized'.

Note that if you are looking to find a tool that will validate against Google rich results guidelines AND the Schema.org structured data model, Sitebulb has a standalone structured data checker which will do exactly that.

Google added a new recommended property of author.url, which allows you to specify a link to a web page that uniquely identifies the author of the article, such as a social media profile or a bio page on the website. This author URL acts as a node identifier, and allows Google to disambiguate the correct author of the article.

Google have made numerous changes to the Math solvers documentation, including the addition of technical, content, and quality guidelines. The most significant change is the removal of the requirement for a solution page.

Previously, Google stated on their Fact Check documentation that a single page could host multiple ClaimReview elements, each for a separate claim. This has completely changed, however, and the documentation now states that each page can only be eligible for a single Fact Check rich result, and that the page must only have one ClaimReview element.