Issue: Google: Spammy structured markup

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October 27, 2018 11:01 AM

Alfa1

Distinguished Member

Google: Spammy structured markup

I am encountering this error in Google Search Console which seems to exclude my threads from Google search:

Spammy structured markup
Description
Markup on some pages on this site appears to use techniques such as marking up content that is invisible to users, marking up irrelevant or misleading content, and/or other manipulative behavior that violates Google''s Spammy Structured Markup guidelines. Learn more: https://support.google.com/webmaster...uctured-markup

Affects
Pages with the URL pattern:
/threads/

I have disabled anything that adds microdata to threads and requested a review. The result was that Google states that my site still violates Googles Policy and that threads are therefore excluded.
I am wondering if this is caused by VW autolink markup. If I compare the markup then I see that wikipedia has removed markup from wikilinks.

Previously I have disabled autolinks but this resulted in a bbcode mess that I could not fix. And to which Google also responded with an error.

Issue Details

Issue Number 5522

Issue Type Bug

Project VaultWiki 4.x Series

Category Search Engine Optimization

Status Forum Bug

Priority 4 - Warnings / Script Errors

Affected Version 4.0.24

Fixed Version (none)

Milestone (none)

Software DependencyXenForo 1.x

License TypePaid

Users able to reproduce bug 0

Users unable to reproduce bug 0

Attachments 0

Assigned Users (none)

Tags (none)

October 27, 2018 12:17 PM

pegasus

VaultWiki Team

VaultWiki doesn't add structured data to /threads/ pages, only to wiki pages. Neither auto-links nor general wiki links from BB-Codes include structured data. If Google is not complaining about structured data issues on wiki pages, we probably won't touch it.

The only structured data that I see on threads is defining post authors as Persons. However, it may not set all of the required properties about the person aside from the person's name; I would expect the URL to the relevant profile about that Person to be defined.

It appears that XenForo is breaking these Google guidelines:

Don't mark up irrelevant or misleading content, such as fake reviews or content unrelated to the focus of a page.

Put the structured data on the page that it describes, unless specified otherwise by the documentation.

Specify all required properties for your rich result type. Items that are missing required properties are not eligible for rich results.

By marking up only the Persons in a thread, the structured data appears irrelevant to the purpose of a thread. The Person data does not describe the thread; on its own, it is better suited to a profile page. To be relevant, each post should be scoped as a Comment, with the Person encapsulated as the post's author property, and the entire thread should be scoped as something like a WebPage, DigitalDocument, or a Conversation. This is a flaw in XenForo's usage of structured data.

Since VaultWiki uses XenForo's post template for its comments, you may receive the same violation on wiki pages that have comments. But once this is fixed by the XenForo devs it should automatically be fixed in wiki comments too. XenForo devs should perform a review of their usage of structured data to ensure that it is relevant, appropriately scoped, and conforms to Google's guidelines, or they should remove the structured data.

VaultWiki does a very thorough job at scoping its own structured data fully and appropriately so that it is relevant to the content. If you notice an issue on a particular wiki page, please let us know.

Marking this as a Forum Bug.

Reply
October 27, 2018 12:22 PM

Alfa1

Distinguished Member

This could be related to this:

Originally Posted by Google

Don't mark up content that is not visible to readers of the page. For example, if the JSON-LD markup describes a performer, the HTML body should describe that same performer.
Don't mark up irrelevant or misleading content, such as ... content unrelated to the focus of a page.

https://developers.google.com/search...es/sd-policies

Common structured data errors

Here are some common causes of structured data manual actions.
The information in the structured data is not shown in the user-visible text. For example, review stars are in the structured data but not on the page. This would cause the stars to appear only in Search results, but not on the page. This often occurs with Products or Reviews.

https://developers.google.com/search...mmon-sd-errors

Reply
October 29, 2018 6:31 AM

Alfa1

Distinguished Member

Reported here: https://xenforo.com/community/thread...e-2011.155473/

Reply

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Issue: Google: Spammy structured markup

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