Hello Webmasters!
As per the announcement made by Google, the support for Structured data scheme “data-vocabulary.org” is going to end from April 6th, 2020
With the increasing usage and popularity of https://t.co/hGrr8MSS40 we decided to focus our development on a single scheme. As of April 6, 2020, https://t.co/N98EXBIRJ6 markup will no longer be eligible for Google rich result features. Read more at https://t.co/n8qsmdLgxE pic.twitter.com/JIg9yqMxRB
— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) January 21, 2020
Let’s understand what Structured Data is?
Structured Data (schema.org and data-vocabulary.org) are used by Search Engines like Google to define the meaningful structures of data for web applications based on markup. Google Uses these structured data in standardized formats to share schemes on search result pages so that the search results can provide information for that particular page and describe what’s on that page.
The focus to provide this kind of data is to understand what content is shared on a particular page, which enables users to see special search results with features and enhancements.
Why did Google take this action?
Google, in its announcement, explicitly said that “With the increasing usage and popularity of schema.org, we decided to focus our development on a single SD scheme.”
The deadline for this action is set as April 6th, 2020, so that SEO experts, webmasters, website owners will have sufficient time to make the transition from “data-vocabulary.org” to “schema.org.”
Google will send out the notification in upcoming months to everyone who will not follow the described guidelines from Google on scheme structured data.
Let’s understand what data-vocabulary.org schema is?
For Google, “data-vocabulary” project was a turning point that developed structured data based on markup on web application. And because of this, google with collaboration from other search engines was able to create schema.org. However, data-vocabulary has become outdated as the internet advances, and now it is preferable to use the more widely shared schema.org. And due to this, data-vocabulary.org is deprecated from Google search results.
This is the only consequence of this change, but the pages will remain valid for other purposes. Thus Google advises to use only schema.org or convert your structured data from data-vocabulary.org to schema.org.
Let’s look at how to convert to schema.org from data-vocabulary.org
Google, as preparation for this, has issued warnings in Google Search Console for the pages using data-vocabulary.org schemas. This warning will help webmasters to easily identify the pages with outdated data-vocabulary.org schemas, so that they can convert them into schema.org.
Let’s look at an example to understand better how to convert to the schema.org.
Breadcrumbs with data-vocabulary,org schema,
<div itemscope itemtype=”https://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb”> <a href=”https://example.org/shoes” itemprop=”url”> <span itemprop=”title”>Shoes</span> </a> </div> <div itemscope itemtype=”https://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb”> <a href=”https://example.org/shoes/leather” itemprop=”url”> <span itemprop=”title”>Leather Shoes</span> </a> </div>
This will show the below error in Search Console?
Update to schema.org ?
<ol itemscope itemtype=”https://schema.org/BreadcrumbList”> <li itemprop=”itemListElement” itemscope itemtype=”https://schema.org/ListItem”> <a itemprop=”item” href=”https://example.org/shoes”> <span itemprop=”name”>Shoes</span></a> <meta itemprop=”position” content=”1″ /> </li> <li itemprop=”itemListElement” itemscope itemtype=”https://schema.org/ListItem”> <a itemprop=”item” href=”https://example.org/shoes/white”> <span itemprop=”name”>White Shoes</span></a> <meta itemprop=”position” content=”2″/> </li> </ol>
Test this on Google Search Console ?
See it’s error-free now?
Note: The above example is only for understanding, and the actual warning may be different as per your business and website platform technology. To fix this technical issue correctly, you can take help from our SEO experts.
Once the code is validated, you can update the code on your website and test it again in the structured data testing tool in Google Search Console and submit it to Google for recrawling.
Over to You!
When it comes to popularity, the JSON-LD schema.org is the most widely used and most preferred option for structured data. You need to update and convert as soon as possible to schema.org from data-vocabulary.org structured data schema as described in the above example.
Also, if you are still unable to fix the issues of data-vocabulary.org, then you can hire SEO Expert from MageComp for guidance and technical help to Fix the SEO with schema.org structured data.
