One SEO professional asked John about structured data warnings in Google Search Console.
Their question was: Google Search Console is throwing an error with the “error in required structured data element.” But, when they take the same structured data to validate it on validator.schema.org, there are no warnings, or any errors.
Their first question is: is this the right site to check the AMP implementation of a web page? And if there is a contradiction, what should the next step be?
John explained that these testing tools are for slightly different purposes. That’s likely why they are seeing the difference.
The testing tool on Schema.org is more about understanding Schema.org markup in general, like overall, based on the requirements that Schema.org has.
The testing tool in Google Search Console is focused purely on what they can pull out of the structured data and use to show in the search features. So it’s really focused on the search part of that story.
Within search, they only use a small part of the Schema.org markup. And sometimes they have slightly different requirements, that perhaps they will require a specific element more than the base Schema.org markup would require.
This is often why you see that difference in the Schema.org validator, which is for theoretical markup. And the Google validator is really for the practical Google search side of things.
This happens at approximately the 7:41 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
SEO Professional 2 7:41
So my first question is Google Search Console is throwing an error, with this error in required structured data element. But when I check the same on validator.schema.org, it does not show any warnings or any errors.
So the first question is, is it the right site to check the AMP implementation of a webpage? And if so, there is a contradiction, like, what should be the step over here?
John 8:09
Now, so the–these testing tools are for slightly different purposes. That’s probably why you’re seeing that difference. The testing tool in schema.org is more about understanding schema.org markup in general, like overall, based on the requirements that schema.org has.
And the testing tool in Search Console is focused purely on what we can pull out of the structured data and use to show in a search feature. So it’s really focused on the search part of that story.
And within search, we only use a small part of the schema.org markup. And sometimes we have slightly different requirements, that maybe we will require, I don’t know, a specific element more than the base schema.org markup would require.
And that’s, that’s often why you see that difference. Like, the schema.org validator is for the theoretical markup. And the Google validator is really for the practical Google search side of things.
SEO Professional 2 9:16
But, is there a way like we can check what exactly is missing over there? Because basically, it’s not an error. It’s a warning on the Search Console. And when I, you know, when I check the details on the Search Console, it just says that you’re not done it right. So will there be a possible way or should I you know, should my tech team figure it out?
John 9:36
Yeah, if it’s a warning, then I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s basically just saying, like, you could have done something different. So firsthand, I wouldn’t worry about it.
What I would do if you want to find out what exactly the difference is, is double-check the documentation on developers.google.com for search, where we have all of the structured data documented, and all of the required and recommended fields, and probably one of the recommended or optional fields is, what is triggering this warning.
