Structured Data - Change History & Alerts

In an extension to ongoing changes in order to 'simplify' the search results, Google have now removed the How-To rich result for users on mobile devices (it will still be shown for desktop users). Note that with mobile indexing, Google indexes the mobile version of a website as the basis for indexing: to have How-To rich results shown on desktop, the mobile version of your website must include the appropriate markup.

Google announced they are reducing the visibility of FAQ rich results - now, rich results will only be shown for well-known, authoritative government and health websites. For all other sites, this rich result will no longer be shown regularly.

Versions 16-22 released in comparatively quick succession, with a range of smaller fixes and updates, including:

• Removed unnecessary reference to geo prefix in Json-ld context file.
• Added example for Drug type.
• Added tripOrigin.
• Added PoliticalParty as type of Organization.
• Fixed a typo in maximumVirtualAttendeeCapacity ("physical" instead of "virtual").
• Added DefinedTerm as an expected value for measurementTechnique and measurementMethod.
• Added an explicit subtype of MediaObject for text: TextObject, and made it a possible expected value for description.
• Noted that thumbnail is potentially applicable to any CreativeWork.
• Removed "courseLength" and added courseSchedule to properly reflect consensus of the public discussion. Added observationPeriod to accompany the recent additions around Observation.
• Amended additionalType to anticipate textual values.
• Consistent formatting of ISSN text in examples.
• Reword definition of timeRequired to be less specific to learning resources.
• Added Microdata example for BlogPosting.
• Added an example of ESIP Science-On-Schema markup to Dataset and ResearchProject.
• Added PerformanceRole example actor property.
• Corrected priceCurrency examples in Offer examples.
• Added bed and occupancy to Accomodation and added a subtype of LodgingBusiness called VacationRental.
• Improvements to Course, introducing properties courseLength, totalHistoricalEnrollment, financialAidEligible, and syllabusSections, alongside side a supporting type, Syllabus.
• The titleEIDR property is now also expected on TVSeason and TVSeries, reflecting industry practice.
• Updated the earlier draft of a vocabulary for statistical observations. The StatisticalPopulation construct is no longer central. Introduced a new StatisticalVariable type, an abstraction for properties that can be measured in a particular place and time. These need not be statistical.

Google updated their documentation to include some examples of how to handle derivatives, integrals, and limits in the potentialAction.mathExpression-input field in the MathSolver documentation.

Google updated the list of countries where the Event search experience is available to only include those where users can see that experience. The previous list also included regions where users could see events in Knowledge Panels.

Google updated their documentation for the Video search feature, changing the description property from required to only recommended (though it's still strongly recommended to help Google better understand the content of your video).

As a result, the missing description issue will no longer appear as a critical issue in Google Search Console, and you may see an increase in the number of valid Video structured data items in the Video enhancement report.

Google updated the Product search feature documentation to detail the properties you can add to make your merchant listing eligible to show return policy information, including return fees and the window of time to return a product.

Google updated their Learning Video search feature documentation, adding a clarification for the required property educationalAlignment.

Now there is a new statement about including multiple values:

"While you may provide multiple educationalAlignment values, it is not guaranteed that all of these values will be used for Learning Video features. If multiple values are provided, and the feature can only use one educationalAlignment value, the feature uses the first value that you provide."

The job search experience is available on Google across different regions of the world. They removed support for South Korea from the region availability - read this article for an explanation why.

Google updated the documentation regarding the recommended property of text ("the text of the question that's being solved in the video"), which previously contained a red box stating 'The text property is required if the learningResourceType property is set to Problem walkthrough.' This has now been removed, so text falls back to just being a recommended property for all types of learning video.

Google updated the documentation to clarify which guidelines you need to follow in order to be eligible for rich results, and they specifically linked out to a list of structured data issues, which can result in a manual action.

Key moments is an enhancement feature for Video rich results, which allows users to navigate video segments like chapters in a book. If your video is hosted on your web page, you can enable key moments by using SeekToAction structured data. Google updated the documentation to clarify the languages this is supported for: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, French, Japanese, German, Turkish, Korean, Dutch, and Russian.

Google updated the Review snippet structured data to recommend using dot separators for decimal ratings. If you're currently using comma separators for decimal ratings in your markup, you'll still be eligible for review snippets. They do however recommend that you update your markup for a more accurate interpretation.

Changes in Core section:

• Added new examples for Blog and BlogPosting.
• Added URL to range of target property (used on Action types).
• Add Person as expected type to hiringOrganization.
• Add DateTime as expected type to expires.

Changes in Health-lifesci section:

• Make Drug and DietarySupplement inherit from Product.

Changes in Pending section:

• Added a checkoutPageURLTemplate property to carry template-ized information about checkout page URLs.
• Added existing properties height, width, depth, and weight for use on OfferShippingDetails to specify the shipping dimensions of a product.
• Added a new shippingOrigin property with expected values of type DefinedRegion for use on OfferShippingDetails.
• Added new property asin as a sub property of identifier with expected values of type Text or URL to represent Amazon Standard Identification Numbers. The asin property is primarily intended for use on type Product but can also be used on Offer and Demand.
• Added existing properties positiveNotes and negativeNotes for use on Product to allow the specification of (positive and negative) highlights for products sold online.

Google added new documentation which describes how you can use WebSite structured data to indicate your preferred site name, which currently appear in mobile Google Search results for the following languages: English, French, Japanese, and German.

They clarified that the generation of site names on the Google Search results page is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a site and references to it that appear on the web.

They use a number of sources from a site's homepage to automatically determine site names, including:

• WebSite structured data
• Content in <title> elements
• Heading elements, such as <h1> elements
• og:site_name

You can help improve the quality of the site name that's displayed for your page by adding WebSite structured data.

Google made a significant change to the Image License search feature, and changed the name of the search feature to Image metadata. Previously it could only be used on licensable images; by specifying license information for the images on your website through structured data, the image can display with a 'Licensable' badge on image thumbnails in Google Images.

Now, image metadata can be added for any image, so the required property that was previously licenseis now 'either creator or creditText or copyrightNotice or license.'

A number of additional recommended properties have also been added to support this:

• creator
• creator.name
• creditText
• copyrightNotice
• license

Google has expanded the eligibility for enhanced product experiences in Google Search through the use of Product structured data, which were previously only open to Merchant Center users. To help make the requirements easier to understand, they have also made significant updates to the Product structured data documentation.

The documentation changes include clarification on the different types of shopping experiences available and the result enhancements you can use to help your content to stand out in search results.

They also have expanded the examples to include:

• Product review page
• Shopping aggregator page
• Pros and cons
• Product page with an offer
• Product with an offer and shipping details
• Indicating free shipping
• Pricing
• Pricing with unit pricing measures
• Energy efficiency ratings

Google re-added the itemReviewed.datePublished property. This is a recommended property that was apparently removed accidentally as part of the previous update to the Fact Check structured data documentation (September 9th 2022).

Google removed datePublished as a recommended property from the Fact Check structured data documentation. Currently, date information isn't used in the Fact Check rich result.

Google added the full list of supported academic values for educationalLevel in the Learning Video structured data documentation.

Google updated the Local Business documentation to clarify how to specify multiple types: if you have multiple types, specify them in an array (additionalType isn't supported).

Google updated the Education Q&A structured data documentation, adding content guidelines;

• Education Q&A pages must follow the same content guidelines for Q&A pages.
• Your page must contain education related questions and answers. There must be at least one question and answer pairing on your page, and the answer must be related to and answer the user's question.
• You are responsible for the accuracy and quality of your Education Q&A pages through this feature. If a certain amount of your content is found to be inaccurate based on quality and pedagogical review processes, then all or a subset of your Q&A pages may not be eligible for this feature until you resolve the issues.

Google updated the Article structured data documentation to reflect that Article markup is open to all types of pages (as announced in 2020 with the page experience update).

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.