In a hangout John Mueller did on 09/03/2021, a webmaster was curious regarding manual actions and job posting schema markup.
The webmaster was under the impression that they had received a manual action from Google based on the job posting schema they had included on a particular page.
John explained that manual actions usually target larger patterns than just code on a single page.
If the webmaster had received a manual action, it is likely that the issue is significantly more widespread than just job posting schema on a job page.
He also said that sometimes they can get the manual actions wrong, but that the webmaster should definitely make sure and check whether or not there is anything amiss with things happening across the entire website.
John explained that when a manual action like this occurs, this means that you should work on improving your processes so this issue does not happen again in the future.
This discussion occurs at the 28:50 mark in the video.
John Mueller 09/03/2021 Hangout Transcript
Webmaster 10 28:50
Hi, everyone, again. I’d like to ask you, John, please about a manual action that we received that is a bit confusing. The description says “job posting markup used on expired job without the validThrough property set in the past.” So basically, it says that the job post is expired. However, our structured data says that it is still valid. The issue is when I checked the job post, user-generated content, so when I checked the job post, I found that it’s not expired, it’s relatively new. And there’s nothing on the page that indicates that it’s expired. So I don’t want to respond to it, you know, in a defensive way that hey guys that there’s some, you know, human error or something, but I’d like to do it the correct way. So what do you think that I should do?
John 29:39
I would double-check to see if you can find maybe a bigger pattern there because usually with manual actions, we give some example URLs when we can, but we only do the manual action when we think that this is something that is more widespread across the website. So the URLs that we give usually are more examples and not a complete list of the problem. So I, I mean, it’s something where you can definitely respond to the manual action and say, I think you got it wrong because if it’s a manual action, sometimes maybe we do get it wrong. But I would also check if there’s a way to check across your website to see if, I don’t know, this expired—our job listing issue is something that is maybe a potential issue on other listings as well. Just to double-check that it’s, it’s really not just this one page that that is kind of like a problem, but rather that there’s actually no broader issue on your website.
Webmaster 10 30:54
When I say that it’s most likely only against that single page because the traffic that comes organically from Google is rising. As a matter of fact, yesterday, we received the highest number of clicks ever from Google organic. So I guess that that’s something related to the page itself, but it’s good, not yet. You can look at it. To be honest, user-generated content is really difficult to control. I think some, yeah, manual checks from our search will be applied. Okay, we’ll see this. But do you think in general, it’s okay to say that maybe you got it wrong?
John 31:28
I mean, it happens. I would first check your website to make sure. Because kind of this back and forth—if they come back and say, “Oh, no, we double-check,” then it’s actually a bigger problem, then you’re kind of deferring the time that you need. But if, when you double-check, you see, oh, it actually looks okay. Or maybe there’s something confusing on your pages where you can tell them it’s like maybe you are confused or maybe users are confused. That’s, that’s also something that might be useful feedback for the manual action folks.
Webmaster 10 32:06
I see. So suppose that some manual action comes, you know, in relation to some spammy content, that’s what we fear always because it’s user-generated content. Will it be acceptable to say that, “Yeah, it was spammy content, for example, posted by the user. We are going to apply some checks ourselves”? But you know, that doesn’t guarantee 100%.
John 32:29
Yeah, yeah. I think that’s perfectly fine. With user-generated content. It’s always a bit tricky. But if you can explain to the manual action team that you took action on the example they gave you to improve your processes to make sure that it doesn’t happen in the future, that’s kind of what they’re looking for.
Webmaster 10 32:46
Sure. Yeah. But there’s still a slight chance that something wrong might happen in the future.
John 32:52
No, no. I mean, it’s always something where with user-generated content, you can improve your processes but that you never know what they will do next.
Webmaster 10 33:04
So the team would understand that it’s a bit… Right. Okay. That’s good. Thank you very much.
