Google Updates ProfilePage Structured Data Documentation via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google updated their documentation for the profile page structured data, a structured data that all creators including recipe bloggers can use and become eligible for enhanced listings in the search results.

What is ProfilePage Structured Data?

ProfilePage structured data is a Schema.org markup that Google uses for enhanced listings in the search results. It’s well known for use with forum and discussion communities but it’s also of use for any profile page where there’s information about the author.

What Changed In The Official Documentation?

Google updated the opening paragraph to make it clearer how Google uses it in the search results and removes the mention of “Perspectives” and replaces it with references to Forums, which aligns with how Google Search refers to them in the search results.

The new version of the opening paragraph is about 26% shorter but offers more precise information.

This is the original version (64 words):

“ProfilePage markup is designed for any site where creators (either people or organizations) share first-hand perspectives. It helps Google Search highlight information about the creator, such as their name or social handle, profile photo, follower count, or the popularity of their content. Google Search also makes use of this markup when disambiguating the creator, and in features such as Perspectives and Discussions and Forums.”

This is the revised version (47 words):

“ProfilePage markup is designed for any site where creators (either people or organizations) share first-hand perspectives. Adding this markup helps Google Search understand the creators that post in an online community, and show better content from that community in search results, including the Discussions and Forums feature.”

What’s ProfilePage Markup Good For?

The ProfilePage structured data markup can be used on any profile page where there’s a creator. It’s not just for communities and can make a profile page eligible to show an enhanced listing in the search results.

This is what Google’s documentation says:

“Other structured data features can link to pages with ProfilePage markup too. For example, Article and Recipe structured data have authors…”

It seems like the ProfilePage markup is underused in the recipe blogger space, not sure why. For example, the Serious Eats profile page for recipe writer J. Kenji López-Alt has ProfilePage structured data markup on his profile page and Google appears to reward that markup with an enhanced listing for his Serious Eats profile page.

Screenshot Of Serious Eats ProfilePage Markup

Screenshot Of Rich Results For Profile Page

Another Screenshot

The above two screenshots are of rich results for the profile pages of recipe authors, pages that use the ProfilePage structured data markup.

Read Google’s updated ProfilePage documentation:

Profile page (ProfilePage) structured data

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Krakenimages.com

Google Updates Organization Structured Data Documentation via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google updated the opening paragraph of the Organization Structured Data documentation to provide a clearer, more comprehensive description of its purpose, with improved clarity on four specific points. The result is a model of how to write a high quality opening paragraph.

The new documentation has a high level of information density, which is the quality of communicating more information with less words. The importance of information density is that it communicates ideas better.

The changes add the following four points:

1. It emphasizes that organization structured data disambiguates one organization from others using structured data properties like iso6523 and naics. Disambiguate means to make something less ambiguous.
2. It explains how certain Schema.org properties can influence visual elements in search results and in a knowledge panel. A knowledge panel is a box containing data about an organization (or person) that appears on the right side of search results when a user queries about those entities.
3. It specifically mentions how organization structured data can enrich merchant knowledge panels and brand profiles with details about return policies, addresses, and contact information.
4. The new opening paragraph now states that there are no required properties for organization structured data and recommends adding as many structured data properties as necessary for relevance. This is not new to the documentation, but it is newly emphasized in the opening paragraph.

None of the four above points existed in the opening paragraph of the previous version of the documentation, serving as an example of how to keep on topic and communicate what a web page is about.

Here is the previous opening paragraph

“You can use organization structured data to let Google know about your organization’s administrative details, for example, logo, address, contact information, and business identifiers. Google can make use of this markup in knowledge panels and other visual elements (such as attribution), which helps users to find your organization’s details on Google Search.”

This is the new opening paragraph:

“Adding organization structured data to your home page can help Google better understand your organization’s administrative details and disambiguate your organization in search results. Some properties are used behind the scenes to disambiguate your organization from other organizations (like iso6523 and naics), while others can influence visual elements in Search results (such as which logo is shown in Search results and your knowledge panel). If you’re a merchant, you can influence more details in your merchant knowledge panel and brand profile, such as return policy, address, and contact information. There are no required properties; instead, we recommend adding as many properties that are relevant to your organization.”

The above opening paragraph is the only change to the document and yet it vastly improves the entire document because a reader knows what to expect as they continue reading.

Takeaways:

Understanding why the documentation is improved gives publishers and SEOs new ideas for understanding why a web page needs to be refreshed.

The changes to Google’s documentation improve it by clearly explaining what the web page is about, how organization structured data benefits users, and identifying a specific class of users who especially benefit from this kind of structured data. The opening paragraph invites readers to continue reading by ensuring they understand the web page’s purpose.

Why the new documentation is improved:

• Higher information density
• Improved topicality (communicates what the document is about)
• Gets to the point fast
• Offers more details and examples
• Is more comprehensive
• Mentions users who will benefit ( merchants)

Why the previous version needed to be fixed:

• Lacked specifics
• Limited in scope
• Lacking in actionable information
• Didn’t prepare the reader for what the entire page is about

Read the new documentation here:

Organization (Organization) structured data

Compare it to the old documentation here:

Organization (Organization) structured data – WaybackMachine

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Mix and Match Studio

Google To Replace Classic Merchant Center By September via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google to replace Merchant Center with new version by September, introducing AI tools and unified management for online and local listings.

• Google will replace classic Merchant Center with Merchant Center Next by September.
• New features include Product Studio, consolidated analytics, and unified product management.
• Transition may pose challenges, but Google promises improved functionality and provides resources.

Google Now Uses Open Graph Title Tag (og:title) For Title Links via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

In an update to its search documentation, Google has expanded the list of sources it uses to generate title links in search results.

Google now includes the og:title meta tag as one of the elements it considers when automatically creating title links for web pages.

Screenshot from: developers.google.com/search/updates, August 2024.

Title links, which appear as clickable headlines for search results, give people a quick introduction to a webpage and how well it matches their search.

Google’s system for generating title links has long relied on various on-page elements. Adding og:title expands the list of criteria Google uses.

Understanding og:title

The og:title tag allows you to specify a title for your content that may differ from the traditional HTML title tag. This can be useful for optimizing how a page appears when shared on social networks or, now, in search results.

Og:title is part of the Open Graph protocol, a set of meta tags developed by Facebook that allows any page to become a rich object in social graphs.

While it’s used to control how content appears on social media platforms, Google’s inclusion of this tag in its title link sources indicates a broader use of Open Graph data.

Impact On SEO & Content Strategy

With this update, you may need to pay closer attention to og:title tags, ensuring they accurately represent page content while remaining engaging for searchers.

Google’s documentation now lists the following sources for automatically determining title links:

1. Content in
2. Main visual title shown on the page
3. Heading elements, such as
   

   elements

4. Content in og:title meta tags
5. Other large and prominent text through style treatments
6. Other page content
7. Anchor text on the page
8. Text within links pointing to the page
9. Website structured data

While Google says its title link generation is automated, understanding the sources it uses can help you influence how pages appear in search.

Best Practices Remain Unchanged

Google’s best practices for title links remain largely unchanged. The company recommends creating unique, descriptive titles for each page, avoiding keyword stuffing, and ensuring titles accurately reflect page content.

Note that changes to these elements may take time to be reflected in search results, as pages must be recrawled and reprocessed.

Featured Image: Sir. David/Shutterstock

Google Explains Why Low-Quality Traffic Can’t Impact Rankings via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s Martin Splitt addressed a question about website trustworthiness and whether competitors can negatively impact it. He explained how Google assesses site trustworthiness and clarified why factors like links and site traffic don’t have a negative influence on Google’s perception of trustworthiness.

Trustworthiness

Googlers, research papers and patents mention the trustworthiness of websites but there is no actual trust metric in use at Google. It was confirmed at one time a long time ago that there are multiple signals that together indicate if a site could be trusted but that’s not a trust algorithm, those are just signals.

When Googlers talk about whether a site is trustworthy it’s probably best to not overthink it, they’re just talking about whether a site is trustworthy.

Can A Competitor Create Negative Trustworthiness Signals?

The person asking the question was worried about a competitor that was sending bot traffic to their site in what they felt was an effort to make their site appear to be untrustworthy by Google’s algorithm.

That might be a reference to an SEO idea that Google uses click metrics to rank web pages but most research papers about clicks are using clicks to validate search results, not for ranking web pages, it’s generally a quality assurance thing.

This is the question that was asked:

“Do I have to be concerned about bad actors trying to make our site appear untrustworthy by sending spam or fake traffic to my site? Since site trustworthiness is binary.”

Binary means it’s either this or that. In this case the person asking the question probably means a site is either trustworthy or untrustworthy with no gray areas in between.

Martin Splitt downplayed the idea of a binary quality to trustworthiness and outright denied that traffic could influence how Google sees a site.

He answered:

“It’s not really binary and just by sending traffic from questionable sources to a site, that won’t be ‘tainted’.”

“Spam or fake traffic” is not something that can negatively influence trust.

Martin explained that if a site itself is spammy then it’s going to be seen as spammy. He then confirmed that what other sites do in terms of linking or traffic has no effect on whether a site looks spammy or not.

He answered:

“If a site itself does shady things, such as spam, malware, sure, that’s a problem, but nobody gets to choose or control where traffic or links are coming from, so that’s not something Google Search will look at to judge a website’s trustworthiness.”

Bot Traffic Doesn’t Affect How Google Sees A Site

Pretty much every website experiences high levels of hacker bots probing around looking for vulnerabilities. Some bots repeatedly hit a site looking for non-existent pages. That’s just the state of the web, every site experiences that.

So what Martin said about third parties being unable to make another site appear to be untrustworthy makes sense, especially when it’s understood that all sites have low quality inbound links and low quality bot traffic.

Watch the SEO Office Hours podcast at the 18:48 minute mark:

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Krakenimages.com

Google Says Title Tags “Maybe” Impact Rankings via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s John Mueller offered a surprising explanation about the ranking impact of title tags. His answer challenged the SEO belief that title tags are a critical ranking factor and clarified their actual role.

Mueller also discussed the proper use of meta descriptions.

Title Elements

The purpose of title tags is to provide a general description of the topic of a webpage.

Google’s SEO Starter Guide shows how to write titles:

“…a good title is unique to the page, clear and concise, and accurately describes the contents of the page. For example, your title could include the name of your website or business, other bits of important information like the physical location of the business, and maybe some information about what the particular page has to offer for users.”

The official W3C documentation defines the purpose of the title tag like this:

“The title element represents the document’s title or name. Authors should use titles that identify their documents even when they are used out of context, for example in a user’s history or bookmarks, or in search results. The document’s title is often different from its first heading, since the first heading does not have to stand alone when taken out of context.”

Meta Description

The meta description describes the web page (that’s why it’s called a meta description).

The official W3C HTML documentation says:

“description
The value must be a free-form string that describes the page. The value must be appropriate for use in a directory of pages, e.g. in a search engine. There must not be more than one meta element with its name attribute set to the value description per document.”

Google’s SEO Stater Guide explains that meta descriptions are “occasionally” used for generating the snippet shown in the search results:

“The snippet is sourced from the actual content of the page the search result is linking to… Occasionally the snippet may be sourced from the contents of the meta description tag, which is typically a succinct, one- or two-sentence summary of the page. A good meta description is short, unique to one particular page, and includes the most relevant points of the page.”

And Google’s Meta Description Best Practices recommends:

“A meta description tag generally informs and interests users with a short, relevant summary of what a particular page is about. They are like a pitch that convince the user that the page is exactly what they’re looking for.”

Notice that both the official HTML documentation and Google do not recommend using your title tag or meta description as a place to park your keywords or for putting a call to action to get people to visit the site? Those are SEO practices that SEOs invented and it’s probably why so many title tags get rewritten, because they’re incorrectly done.

The Ranking Impact Of Title Tags

Google’s John Mueller directly answered and confirmed that changing the title element maybe can impact rankings. He didn’t say anything about the title tag being a ranking factor. He just said that changing the title tag maybe can impact rankings.

Mueller’s answer confirmed that changing the title element could maybe impact rankings:

This is the question:

“We have a website with satisfying ranks and now our product added new features. We need to modify the page meta title & description, does that affect the current rankings?”

John Mueller answered that maybe changing the title tag could change the rankings in the search results.

Here’s his answer:

“Yes, or better, maybe. Changing things like titles or headings on pages can result in changes in Search.”

Why did Mueller say maybe?

He didn’t explain why.

But his answer confirms that changing your title elements doesn’t automatically cause a change in rankings.

My opinion (based on my experience) is that title elements are just content and changing your content can affect rankings.

Mueller’s answer about meta descriptions implied that it doesn’t have an affect on rankings but it could affect the snippet shown in the search results. That’s something that the digital marketing community is already on board with.

This is what he said about meta descriptions:

“Similarly, changing the meta description on a page can result in changes with how the snippet of a page is shown in Search. This is expected, and usually something that SEOs or site-owners focus on in an attempt to improve things in search.”

Title Tags Maybe Can Change Rankings

Mueller’s answer might come as a surprise to some because belief that the title tag is an important ranking factor has been a part of the SEO tradition since the beginning of SEO over 20 years ago when search engines were relatively primitive compared to today. Some in the SEO community, for whatever reason, continue the decades old tradition that title elements are a huge ranking factor.

Mueller confirmed that changing the title element might maybe impact search results, which is what some people have experienced, in either direction of rankings.

Listen to the question and answer at the 19:29 minute mark:

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Google’s Revamped Documentation Shows 4 Reasons To Refresh Content via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google significantly revamped its documentation about ranking pages that contain video content. While the changelog lists three areas that changed, a review of the content provides a case study of four considerations for digital marketers and publishers when refreshing content to improve relevance for site visitors—and Google.

What Changed

The documentation that was updated relates to ranking web pages that contain videos. The purpose of the documentation is to communicate best practices for optimizing videos for higher visibility in Google’s search results.

Google’s changelog indicated that there were three major changes to the Video SEO best practices page.

• Clarified video indexing criteria
• Updated technical requirements
• Added a new section about dedicated watch pages for each video

This is what the changelog shows what was changed:

“Improving the Video SEO documentation

What: Overhauled the video SEO best practices. Notably, we clarified the video indexing criteria and technical requirements, added a new watch page section, and expanded our examples.

Why: Based on feedback submissions, we revisited our video SEO guidance to clarify what’s eligible for a video result and how site owners can make it easier for Google to find their videos.”

Four Reasons To Refresh Content

There’s a common misinterpretation that encourages changing content annually because “Google loves fresh content,” which is a gross misunderstanding of the Freshness Algorithm. Content shouldn’t be changed without purpose—otherwise, it’s just “rearranging the furniture” instead of truly “redesigning the space.”

Google’s reasons for updating the content offer a mini case study of three things publishers and businesses should consider when freshening up their content.

These are the three reasons for changing the Video SEO content:

1. Remove Outdated Content
2. Improved Information Density
3. Add Fresh Information
4. Update For Brevity And Clarity

1. Remove Outdated Content

The old version of the documentation was written when video as web content was a “growing format” and the changes reflect that the times have changed, rendering the old content out of date.

“Video is a growing format for content creation and consumption on the web, and Google indexes videos from millions of different sites to serve to users. “

Videos in content are not a growing format. The editors of the web page were right to remove that passage because it no longer made any sense.

Takeaway: Always keep up to date with how your readers perceive the topic. Failure to do this will make the content look less authoritative and trustworthy.

2. Improved Information Density

Information density in this context describes the ability of content to communicate ideas and topics with the least amount of words and with the highest amount of clarity.

An opening sentence should reflect what the entire topic of the web page is about but the original opening sentence did a poor job of communicating that. It referenced that “Video is a growing format” which is a statement that absolutely did not reflect the web page topic.

This is the new opening sentence:

“If you have videos on your site, following these video SEO best practices can help more people find your site through video results on Google.”

The new sentence accurately describes the topic of the entire web page is about in only 23 words.  Here’s something really cool: The second sentence remains exactly the same between the old and revised versions.

Takeaway: The lesson here is to revise what needs to be revised and don’t make changes when the original works just fine.

3. Add Fresh Information

An important change that all publishers should consider is to update content with fresh content that reflects how topics evolve over time. Products, laws, how consumers use services and products, everything undergoes some kind of change over time.

Google added content about tools available in Google Search Console that enable publishers to monitor the performance of their video content pages.

4. Update For Brevity And Clarity

The third reason for changing some of the content was to make it more concise, easier to read with simplified language. One of the subtle changes they made was change the phrase “landing page” to “watch page.” This seemingly small change clarifies the meaning of the sentence by making it super clear that they are referring to a page where videos are watched. Previously the documentation made zero references to watch page and now it makes 21 references to that phrase, introducing consistency in the message of the web page.

Many Reasons To Update Content

Every publisher should consider reviewing their content on a daily basis, whether that’s once a year for a smaller site, or chunking it up and tackling different sections on a monthly basis, a content review is a great way to keep content relevant to users and to discover new topics for content. Sometimes it’s better to break out a topic from a web page and create a dedicated page for it.

Read the updated documentation:
Video SEO best practices

Compare it to the old documentation at Archive.org:
Video SEO best practices

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Cast Of Thousands

Google Cautions On Improper 404 Handling via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s John Mueller addressed whether numerous 404 errors negatively impact rankings and provided a clear explanation of the best practices for handling them.

404 (Not Found) Status Code

404 is the code that a server sends when a browser or a crawler requests a web page that the server couldn’t find. It only means that the page was not found.

The official W3C documentation doesn’t use the word “error” in its definition of 404. That said, the 400 series of codes (400, 404, 410, etc.) are classified as Client Error Responses. A client is a browser or a crawler, so a client error response means that the server is telling the browser or crawler that their request is in error. It doesn’t mean that the website is in error.

This is the official W3C definition of a 404 Page Not Found response:

“The 404 (Not Found) status code indicates that the origin server did not find a current representation for the target resource or is not willing to disclose that one exists. A 404 status code does not indicate whether this lack of representation is temporary or permanent; the 410 (Gone) status code is preferred over 404 if the origin server knows, presumably through some configurable means, that the condition is likely to be permanent.”

Will 404 Errors Affect Rankings?

The person asking the question wanted to know if a lot of 404 responses will affect rankings. Google’s John Mueller answered the question then he explained the right way to “fix” 404 error responses and cautioned about when not to “fix” them. I put “fix” in quotation marks because 404 responses are not always something that needs fixing.

Here’s the question:

“My website has a lot of 404s. Would I lose my site’s rankings if I don’t redirect them?”

John Mueller answered:

“First off, the 404s wouldn’t affect the rest of your site’s rankings.”

Addressing 404s With Redirects

Mueller next discussed the use of redirects for stopping 404 responses from happening. A redirect is a server response that tells the client that the web page they are requesting has been moved to another URL. A 301 redirect tells the browser or crawler that the URL has permanently moved to another URL.

When To Use Redirects For 404s

Redirecting a web page that no longer exists to another web page is sometimes the right way to handle 404 page not found responses.

This is how Mueller explains the proper use of redirects for “fixing” 404 responses:

“Redirects can play a role in dealing with old pages, but not always. For example, if you have a genuine replacement product, such as a new cup that functionally replaces a cup which is no longer produced, then redirecting is fine.”

When Not To Use Redirects For 404s

Next he explained when not to use redirects for 404s, explaining that it’s a crummy experience to show a web page that is irrelevant to what the site visitors are expecting to see.

Mueller explains:

“On the other hand, if you just have similar pages, then don’t redirect. If the user clicked on your site in search of a knife, they would be frustrated to only see spoons. It’s a terrible user-experience, and doesn’t help in search. “

It’s Okay To Show 404 Responses

Mueller next explained that it’s okay to show 404 responses because it’s the right response for when a browser or crawler asks for a page that doesn’t exist on a server anymore.

He explained:

“Instead, return an HTTP 404 result code. Make a great 404 page. Maybe even make a 404 page that explains why spoons are superior to knives, if you can make that argument. Just don’t blindly redirect to a similar page, a category page, or your homepage. If you’re unsure, don’t redirect. Accept that 404s are fine, they’re a normal part of a healthy website.”

Always Investigate Error Responses

Something that Mueller didn’t mention is that 404 responses should always be investigated. Don’t stop investigating just because the page doesn’t exist and there’s no other page to redirect it to. Sometimes there’s a real problem that needs solving.

404 By Internal Links

For example, some 404s are caused by broken internal linking where a URL is misspelled. You can “fix” that by redirecting the wrong URL to the correct URL but that’s not fixing the problem because the real problem is the broken link itself.

404 Caused By Outgoing Links

Some 404s are caused by linking to pages that no longer exist. Linking to pages that don’t exist makes it look like the page is abandoned. It’s a poor user experience to link to a non-existent web page and there is never a “normal part of a healthy website.” So either link to the right page, link to something else or don’t link to anything at all.

404s Caused By Inbound Links

There are another type of 404 responses that Mueller didn’t talk about that need looking into. Sometimes sites misspell a URL and when that happens the right response would be a 301 to the correct response. You can try contacting the site to ask them to fix their mistake but it’s easier to just add the redirect and move on with your life.

Listen to the question and answer at the 2:08 minute mark:

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