One SEO professional asked John during a recent hangout about Schema markup. They work with a large healthcare provider in the US – basically, they are in the top 5 healthcare companies.
They have thousands of providers in hundreds of locations. So the SEO pro is building out Schema, and they are doing it exactly like it should be done.
They are doing symptoms, treatment, health insurance that’s accepted, everything like that. They are building it out and testing it in the Schema validator.
However, when they go to the Rich Results Test on Google, it doesn’t validate when they go to Google Search Console.
It’s not showing.
So they are guessing it’s wrong. But they are building it to a tool they thought was going to be correct.
Their main question is: what should they be doing to get this Schema markup to validate?
John explained that there are two main things that play a role here.
On the one hand, the validator on Schema.org is set up to validate all kinds of theoretical Schemas that you can provide with Schema.org. It’s basically a “superset” of all functionality that’s available, and not something that would necessarily validate on Google.
The validator in Search Console is based purely on functionality that has visible changes in Google Search.
And that’s usually a very small subset of the bigger Schema.org set of things that you can mark up. For example, if you’re marking things up that don’t have a visible effect in the search results in terms of maybe – shows, stars, or shows a video or something like that – then this would be something where Search Console would say, Well I don’t see anything here..
This might fall into the category that the SEO pro is seeing there.
The other thing that sometimes plays a role regarding elements that have a visible effect is that on Schema.org, the requirements are sometimes not the same as in Google search.
So Schema.org will have some required properties and some optional properties.
And it kind of validates based on those.
But in Google Search, sometimes it has a stricter set of requirements which they have documented in their help center as well.
To say “Well, we would like to show it in this special way in the search results. And they can only do that if they have this set of information.”
From that perspective, on the one hand – if Google doesn’t show it in the search results, then they will not show it in the testing tool.
On the other hand, if the requirements are different, and Google’s requirements are stricter, and you don’t follow those guidelines, then they would also flag it as an error or warning in the testing tool.
This happens at approximately the 48:14 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
I work with a very large healthcare provider in the US, top five. So we’re talking thousands of providers, hundreds of locations. I’m building out Schema, and I’m doing it exactly like it should be done. I’m doing symptoms, treatments, health insurance that’s accepted, everything like that. I’m building it out, and then testing it in the Schema validator.
But then when I go over to the Rich Results Test for Google, it doesn’t validate. When I go to Google Search Console, it’s not showing up. So I’m guessing that it’s wrong. But I’m building it to a tool that I thought was going to be correct. So what should I do to actually get this to validate?
John 48:59
So I think there are two main things that kind of play a role here. On the one hand, the validator on schema.org is set up to validate all kinds of theoretical schemas that you can provide with schema.org. And that’s kind of the superset of all functionality. And the validator in Search Console is based purely on functionality that has visible changes in Google Search.
And that’s usually a very small subset of the bigger schema.org kind of set of things that you can mark up. So for example, if you’re marking things up that don’t have a visible effect in the search results, in terms of maybe, shows stars or shows a video or something like that, then that would be something where Search Console would say, Well,.
I don’t see anything here, which might kind of fall into that category that you’re seeing there. The other thing that sometimes plays a role with regards to elements that do have a visible effect is that on schema.org, the requirements are sometimes not the same as in Google search. So schema.org will have some required properties and some optional properties.
And it kind of validates based on those. And in Google Search, sometimes we have a stricter set of requirements that we have documented in our Help Center as well. To kind of say, well, we would like to show it in this special way in the search results. And we can only do that if we have this set of information.
So from that point of view, on the one hand, if Google doesn’t show it in the search results, then we would not show it in the testing tool. And on the other hand, if the requirements are different, and Google’s requirements are stricter, and you don’t follow those guidelines, then we would also flag that as an error or a warning in the testing tool.
SEO Professional 8 51:00
Is there any way to tell what the items are that are not recognized by Google? Or is it just a, you know, hit and miss with trying to do it. Because this thing is extremely well built out, so that the search engines would completely understand everything that’s in there is on the page.
Just having frustration with doing this. Should I be building two sets of Schema, one that Google recognizes, and then the others that it doesn’t recognize? You see what I mean?
John 51:30
Yeah, I think you could theoretically do that. I think it depends on what your goal is, with the structured data that you’re providing. If your goal is really, I just want this visible in search, which is kind of the people that tend to come to us because they’re they’re focused on search, then usually, you would just provide whatever Google needs, and specify that. We have the different types of features that we support in the search developer documentation.
I think there’s a big compilation there. That’s something where usually my recommendation is site should go there, look at the features that they think are relevant, and then implement just those features. Kind of going the other way around and saying, Well, I’ll implement everything and then see if there’s a feature that matches there, that’s sometimes a bit trickier. It’s just like more work, I think.
If there are specific things that you’re trying to do with the structured data for other providers, for other search engines, or maybe you have an internal search engine that runs over your site, or some kind of, I don’t know, other system that extracts information from your site, then you might have other requirements there that you want to take care of.
And it can happen that you have one set for your general structured data and one set specific for the search results. And from our point of view, that’s also fine.
SEO Professional 8 52:55
Yeah, most of my limitation is in the medical webpage, because Schema says you can do all of this stuff. And when I do it, then it doesn’t validate.
So oh, I’ll do that, that last thing you mentioned about, you know, taking a look at that. And that’s called the search developer documentation.
John 53:10
Yes, exactly.
