2023 started off on a calm note with very few changes in rich results performance, but since the March Broad Core Update, we’ve seen a few big swings happen on the search engine results page, particularly with Video and FAQ rich results.

Based on our industry data, we’ve seen most of the changes happen after an announcement from Google – whether that be a core update or a documentation update on how they are displaying specific rich results. However, there are also changes on the search engine results page that happen unannounced by Google.

Here’s what our industry data is showing us from the past few months.

Video Rich Result Changes

Effective April 13, 2023, Google has simplified the video presentation on the search engine results page. Prior to this change, video thumbnails were shown in two different ways.

1. Pages that had a video as the main content of the page would show up with this listing format on the SERP.

2. Pages that had a video present on a page but not as the main element of the page would show up with this listing format on the SERP.

Today, Google is no longer awarding a video rich result to pages that do not have the video as the main content. However, if the video is the main content of the page, the video rich results will continue to show.

After April 13, we’ve seen the clicks and impressions for Video Rich Results drop by over 95% for all our clients and the numbers slowly improved after April 21st, as a result of customers making video the main content on a page.

Read Google’s Video SEO best practices guide to learn how you can help Google find your video and optimize it for search. If you are a Schema App enterprise customer, your Customer Success Manager will provide you with content recommendations to optimize your videos.

FAQ Rich Results Fluctuations

Our relationship with FAQ rich results is tumultuous at best.

Around April 5th 2023, we saw the clicks and impressions for FAQ rich results on a downward trend.

This drop was mainly for FAQ rich results on mobile as mentioned by other SEOs.

Quick update on the drop in FAQ snippets on mobile & the drop in video snippets in the SERPs.

FAQ snippets remain down on mobile based on the change on 4/5. And video snippets have plummeted for sites where the videos are not the main content (starting on 4/13). No change there: pic.twitter.com/M0406FPGWG

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) April 29, 2023

Even though the numbers show signs of slow recovery after April 18, we saw the clicks and impressions for FAQ rich results on desktop and mobile dropped drastically on the weekend of May 7. We’ve yet to see any confirmed algorithm changes or comments from Google regarding this issue.

Despite being one of the top-performing rich results on the search engine results page, FAQ rich results have historically been notorious with their fluctuations. We saw the performance for FAQ rich results fluctuate in May, August, September and October of 2022.

We have yet to isolate the reason for this decline but it looks like Google is reducing how often it is awarding a rich result and the queries that might be achieving them.

Moreover, we aren’t seeing this across all our clients, in fact some clients are seeing gains. This leads us to believe that it could be based on the quality of content.

In an unofficial statement on Mastodon, John Mueller also mentioned that “sites love adding FAQ markup, it gives them more room in search, and at some point, it makes the results less useful. The right balance makes sense to re-evaluate from time to time, like with any other search element.”

As a result, our Customer Success team keeping a close eye on the situation and revisiting the schema markup strategy to make content recommendations to drive results. This is also why we urge our customers to diversify their content and rich results, to reduce dependency on individual rich results to drive traffic.

Google Updates: Generative AI on Search

Google’s I/O developer conference also happened today and recent reports from Wall Street Journal and New York Times have leaked potential changes that Google might be making to the search engine results page prior to the conference.

During the keynote speech at the conference, Google unveiled the addition of generative AI to their search engine results page. Users will still need to type a query, but the generative AI search engine will provide users will answer directly on the SERP with links to websites, snippets of content and ads. Users can also ask follow-up questions to get more specific responses.

Image: Google

This change is a departure from the traditional search results and could explain the recent changes in FAQ and video rich results. But more importantly, Google’s Search Generative Experience will still require a data source to identify information from trusted websites and sources. This is where Schema Markup comes to play.

Watch our ‘How Marketers Can Leverage Schema Markup and Prepare for AI-Search’ webinar recording to learn why Schema Markup and your Knowledge graph are important for AI and machine learning.

The post April 2023 Rich Results Weather Report: Video & FAQ Fluctuations appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

At Schema App, our Customer Success Team is constantly navigating and pivoting through these changes to help our customers maintain and grow their visibility in search. As such, we’ve gathered some key insights from our team on their learnings from 2022 and what they expect to see for Schema Markup in 2023.

Insight #1. Google is investing a lot in Structured Data

In 2020, Google invested heavily in COVID-related Structured Data changes. In 2021, things were quieter and we saw fewer activities.

This year, Google introduced significant updates to their Structured Data documentation and 2023 is likely to maintain the same momentum.

Machine learning complements Structured Data

In April 2022, Google released an episode on their Search off the Record Podcast called “Structured Data: What’s it all about?”.

In the episode, Ryan Levering shared how Google uses Structured Data to complement their machine-learning work. Structured Data is currently provided by users to help Google understand the content on a page and improve the accuracy of its search results. Levering has emphasized that “it’s always good to empower people who are giving you data, to have control over that.” Rather than rendering Structured Data obsolete, machine learning will fill the information gaps or “enhance coverage of the feature” on Google search.

According to Levering, Google will also “…continue to flesh out the Structured Data usage in terms of adding more features and looking into more ways [they] can use it in cooler things that are not just visual treatments but actually help with more understanding on the page”. This is reflected in the changes we saw in 2022 and foreshadows what is to come in the new year.

Notable changes from Google in 2022

Changes in Video rich results

In June 2022, we observed a decrease in clicks and impressions for Video Rich Results on desktop. This trend was also noticed by other SEOs. At the same time, we noticed a change in how the Video Rich Results were being presented on the SERPs.

Data provided by Schema App / Schema Performance Analytics

The Video Rich Results showing up on the ‘All’ search results page only featured Youtube videos. Upon clicking on these results, users would be directed to the video’s Youtube page rather than the site where the video was embedded. Learn more about the changes in Video rich results here.

Volatility in FAQ rich results

In April 2022, 65% of our clients experienced a drop in clicks on their FAQ rich results and saw their results recover again in May. This happened again in August 2022, only for the results to recover again in late October.

Data provided by Schema App / Schema Performance Analytics

Despite the disruptiveness of these fluctuations, you should not “abandon certain rich result targeting should performance start to drop”, says Kevin Veilleux, a Customer Success Manager at Schema App.

“As we saw with Videos and FAQ, there’s value in staying the course”.

Major developments in Product search results

This past year, Google also made waves in Product search. Google is enabling more Products to be shown on the SERP, which comes as no surprise as their competition with Amazon heats up in the eCommerce space.

Expanding eligibility for Merchant Listing Experiences with Product Structured Data

In September 2022, Google announced that businesses can now be eligible for Merchant Listing Experiences by adding Product Structured Data to their web pages. At the same time, they added more recommended Product Structured Data properties such as colours, size, and material for merchant listings.

New Merchant Listings report on Google Search Console

On top of expanding the eligibility for Merchant Listing Experiences with Product Structured Data, Google also introduced a new Merchant Listing Report on GSC. This new report will help merchants identify Structured Data errors, warnings and valid pages for free listing experiences in search.

New Pros and Cons enhancement for editorial Product review pages

Product reviews are a helpful resource in the buyer journey and Google added a new ‘Pros and Cons’ enhancement to the product review snippets. Businesses can add Pros and Cons Structured Data on their pages with product reviews to be eligible for this new enhancement.

2022 was a busy year for Structured Data and we see this as a signal of its growing importance in Google’s search environment. What does this mean for SEO teams in 2023? It means, it’s time for SEO teams to start prioritizing Structured Data as part of their SEO strategy.

Insight #2. Invest in your SEO Structured Data strategy as soon as possible to stay ahead of the competition

According to research by the HTTP Archive, the usage of Structured Data has increased in 2022, in comparison to 2021. Of the websites they surveyed, they found that the use of JSON-LD on homepages increased from 34% in 2021 to 37% in 2022 on mobile devices. This upward trend of Structured Data usage reflects the growing popularity of Structured Data as an SEO strategy, and we predict this trend to continue in 2023.

The HTTP Archive’s research also showed that WebSite, Organization and Local Business were three of the most used Schema.org types in 2022. Even though more sites are implementing Structured Data, many of them are implementing it on a basic level.Image by HTTP Archive

Google has over 32 rich result opportunities and there are many other types of Structured Data that have yet to be utilized en masse. There is no better time to invest in a more complex Structured Data strategy to stay ahead of this growing trend.

At Schema App, we’ve seen other Schema.org types and their Rich Results like FAQPage, Product, and Reviews performing well for our customers.

You can also opt for other eye-catching interactive rich results like Aggregate Ratings, HowTo and Video. These untapped opportunities could help your organization stand out in search against your competitors and drive click-through rates and conversions on your site. 

How to get started with a Schema Markup strategy

Before you start, you have to set a goal for what you want to achieve and the metrics you want to move. If you want to drive clicks, impressions or CTR for pages that are essential to your business, Schema Markup can help.

1. Identify the key pages on your site that you want to target with rich results. (i.e. your location pages, product pages, physician pages, etc.) You might want to start by testing out a few pages for a specific rich result.
2. Check if the content on your page fulfills Google’s required Structured Data properties for the targeted rich result. If it does not, review Google’s required Structured Data properties and add the required content to make your page eligible for the targeted rich result.
3. Once you have the required content on your page, apply Schema Markup to make your page eligible for the targeted rich result. You can add Schema Markup to individual unique pages using our Editor tool, or at a larger scale using our Highlighter tool.
4. After applying the Schema Markup to your page, test your results to ensure the markup is eligible using Google’s Rich Results test tool.
5. To measure the results, use Google Search Console or Schema App’s Schema Performance Analytics tool to compare the performance of your optimized pages to the rest of your site, or compare the performance of the optimized pages before and after the implementation of Schema Markup to see how it has contributed to your desired outcome.

Learn how to develop a Schema Markup strategy for your website here.

Insight #3. Diversify your Schema Markup strategy

As we saw in 2022, there can be a lot of volatility around Google’s rich results. In June, we saw Video rich results on desktop disappear for many of our customers, causing a change in site traffic. In August, we saw FAQ rich results settling to new levels following the Helpful Content Update.

We expect Google to continue experimenting/changing/introducing new things in 2023, which necessitates the need for more diverse content for rich result targeting,” says Veilleux.

Organizations that have more diversity in their rich results are less impacted when an algorithm change targets a specific type of rich result. Here’s how you can start diversifying your Schema Markup strategy.

1. Monitor your rich results on Google Search Console

To start, you need to know which rich results you are currently achieving. Most of this information is available on Google Search Console, or through Schema Performance Analytics for Schema App enterprise customers.

Once you know which rich results you are currently achieving, explore Google’s search gallery to see other rich results your content could be eligible for.

2. Maintain thorough markup

Google’s required and recommended Structured Data properties only make up a small percentage of the properties available for Schema.org types.

At Schema App, one of our best practices is to markup page content with all the relevant properties available through Schema.org, not just what Google has listed as required or recommended. By ensuring markup is as descriptive as possible, Schema App supports semantic SEO beyond attaining rich result eligibility.

This year, when authoring the Schema Markup for our customer’s Product pages, we marked up their images even though it wasn’t a required property for Product rich results. Shortly after, Google expanded the eligibility for Merchant Listing Experiences with Product Structured Data and image was a required property for it. As a result, our customer was instantly eligible for Merchant Listing rich results.

By marking up as many properties as you can, you are optimizing all eligible content on your page to maximize your opportunities for rich results both now and in the future.

Insight #4. Content and Structured Data go hand in hand

SEO is a team sport and results happen when you work together. Schema Markup strategy can be challenging for SEO teams when they’re siloed off from content and unable to make additions or updates.

For your Schema Markup strategy to succeed, your content needs to:

1. Match the intent of search queries, and
2. Align with Google’s required and recommended Structured Data properties for your targeted type.

Content must match the intent of the searcher

The quality of your content is a key factor to a successful Schema Markup strategy. With Google’s recent Helpful Content Update, we see Google drilling down into the quality of the content. If your content does not meet the needs of the searcher, Google will not award you with a rich result.

We saw this firsthand after Google’s rolled out the Helpful Content Update in August. After the update, content previously receiving FAQ rich results lost the feature because the “questions” were actually statements or headings that did not match user queries.

Align your content with the Structured Data requirements 

Content is at the core of your Schema Markup strategy. Letting your content team know what content needs to be on a page for your SEO team to mark up is the best way to ensure alignment. That way, every piece of content produced is more likely to drive clicks and conversions.

How to align content with Structured Data

1. Make sure your content team knows Google’s content requirements for rich result eligibility

If your content team is looking to drive more traffic to Blog posts, make sure they know what Google’s required and recommended properties are. They should also keep these required and recommended properties in mind when creating other types of new content on an ongoing basis.

2. Use Google’s rich result documentation as a guideline for what constitutes “high-quality content”.

“The required and recommended properties are a “cheat guide” for what might be important and relevant to end users AND Google’s algorithm,” says Ruby Ross, Customer Success Manager at Schema App.

When developing new content, looking at Google’s required and recommended properties can give you a good idea of what Google has decided is important for users to know, and align your content with that.

Insight #5. Experiment with Structured Data

Google is constantly experimenting and updating its algorithms to best meet the searcher’s needs. This year, we saw many updates to the SERP and Google’s Structured Data documentation. These changes reaffirm that you shouldn’t take a set-in-and-forget-it approach to Structured Data on your site (read our article on schema drift). You have to be ready to deploy the necessary changes when Google makes an update.

Our Highlighter tool’s dynamic deployment enables our customers to easily apply markup changes at scale within minutes to keep up with Google’s changes. It also means you can easily experiment with new types of Schema Markup and properties at scale.

Experimenting with new types of rich results can help your organization diversify and proactively adapt to Google’s changes. At Schema App, our Customer Success Team runs experiments with our customers every quarter. The experiments vary based on our customers’ desired outcomes and strategies.

Examples of the experiments include:

• Experimenting with different rich results on the same page set to see which rich result performs better
• Experimenting with adding rich result-eligible content to drive traffic to high-priority pages (i.e. FAQs for BlogPosts)
• Experimenting with different properties for a single rich result (e.g. Pros and Cons, or lowPrice vs. highPrice for Product)

These experiments help our customers uncover opportunities, diversify their rich results, and optimize their Schema Markup strategy to maximize their results.

Insight #6. Schema Markup is a safe bet during a recession

The recession is looming over many marketing teams as we wade through tighter cash flows and smaller budgets for the new year. However, maintaining market share and keeping up with the competition is more important than ever.

Measurable ROI

In times like these, marketing teams should invest in strategies that have a measurable return on investment. Schema Markup is one of them.

When you add Schema Markup to your pages and achieve rich results, you’ll want to see the clicks and impressions that you’ve achieved specifically from the URLs that are getting these rich results.

We created the Schema Performance Analytics (SPA) tool with this in mind. With the SPA Page Level Report, users can see the performance of URLs with Schema Markup and calculate if the increase in traffic drives more revenue for their business.

As Schema Markup becomes a growing trend, there has never been a better time to experiment and invest in this strategy. You can justify the investment by starting small and measuring its impact on your business results.

Point of Differentiation

Implementing a Schema Markup strategy for your site also serves as a point of differentiation if you operate in a competitive industry.

Based on an analysis across our entire customer set, pages with markup from Schema App have a 40% higher click-through rate than pages without. The click-through rate for pages achieving rich results is notably higher than those without. In 2022, we also saw the click-through rate for pages with FAQ, Videos, and Q&A rich results performing exceptionally well.

If your competitors aren’t using Schema Markup, your brand and pages can stand out on the SERP and get more traffic onto your site. Investing and experimenting with Structured Data at a time when teams are more risk-averse can help your organization gain greater visibility on the SERP and beat the competition.

Conclusion

Needless to say, our Schema App team has learned a lot from 2022. As we enter 2023 with uncertain economic conditions, understanding what is working, what is delivering value and what you can scale is vital.

Schema Markup is a scalable SEO strategy that delivers measurable results and returns. If you haven’t invested in Schema Markup, 2023 is a good time to start. If you have budgetary constraints, you can always start small and expand when you see results. Your SEO and content teams should also be working cross-functionally to ensure every piece of content you invest in aligns with the Structured Data best practices to maximize clicks.

If you are looking to start or take your Schema Markup strategy to the next level, we can help! Get in touch with our team today to learn more about our scalable end-to-end Schema Markup solution.

The post Schema Markup SEO in 2023: What To Expect appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

Two key takeaways:

• Search is changing – with Google making updates to the SERP, in Video, FAQ, and Product Rich results.
• Diversify your rich results and manage your Schema Markup to achieve optimal results in changing search landscape. 

Rich Result Changes in September 2022

FAQ Rich Result Changes

This past August, we reported seeing 42% of our customers experience a drop in clicks for their FAQ rich results across mobile and desktop. 

This trend has continued into September as we continue to see 45.88% of our customers drop in clicks for their FAQ rich results in the first two weeks of the month and 43.53% of our customers have continued to see a drop in clicks for their FAQ rich results in the second half of September. To date, we’re seeing this decline affect a wide range of industries. 

Healthcare is one of the industries that took a huge hit. 57% of our healthcare customers saw a further decrease in clicks and impressions this September. Google is no longer awarding the FAQ rich results for Physician pages, resulting in a decline in clicks for their FAQ rich results. However, many of these customers are still getting clicks from the FAQ rich results on their services and blog pages. 

We have yet to identify the cause of the decline for other industries but we do know that Google’s algorithm is constantly changing. FAQ rich results continue to perform, however, organizations should be reviewing their Schema Markup strategy to ensure they have a diversified portfolio of rich results.

This means reviewing the rich results your organization is achieving today and proactively looking for content on your site that is eligible for more types of rich results opportunities. Diversifying your rich results allows your website to keep performing despite Google’s changes and your team can quickly double down when a specific rich result is performing. 

Google preferring Youtube for Video Rich Results

We first observed a sharp decline in clicks and impressions for Video Rich Results in June, where 70% of our customers saw a decrease in the performance of their Video Rich Results on desktop devices. The Video Rich Results started to recover in August until this sudden drop again in September. 

In the first half of September, we saw 41.86% of our customers decline in clicks and a 53.49% decline in impressions for their Video Rich Results compared to the second half of August. 

In addition to the number of customers impacted, we also saw a big change in how Video rich results are showing up in the SERP. Google is preferring Youtube over other providers. 

Could this be a result of Google’s September core update or is it just Google continuing to refine the search experience? Stay tuned to find out. For now, we will continue to monitor the Video rich results every week to see how this trend progresses over time. 

Growth of Impressions for Recipe Rich Results

In August, 83% of our customers reported seeing the impressions for their Recipe rich results grow at an average of 3513% compared to July. 

This September, we are continuing to see an upward trend in the clicks and impressions for Recipe rich results with 60% of our customers seeing growth in impressions for their Recipe rich results. 

Google Updates in September 2022

More Product Search Features can be achieved with Product Schema Markup

On September 13, Google announced that merchants can now be eligible for merchant listing experiences simply by adding Product Schema Markup to their web pages, even if they do not have a Google Merchant Center account. 

This is awesome news! Now instead of just getting review ratings, price and availability, Product Schema Markup can help you achieve new experiences in search. With Google and Amazon battling for product search, we see this as Google’s move towards enabling more products to be shown on the SERP. 

Google currently has two broad categories of experiences:

1. Merchant listing experiences for web pages that allow shoppers to buy a product on the site.
   
   In the past, these merchant listing experiences (Shopping Knowledge panel, Popular products rich result, shopping experiences in Google Images and Google lens) were only open to users with Google Merchant Center accounts and the product details shown in these rich results were supplied from the Google Merchant Center feed.
2. Product snippets for a broader set of web pages with product information (including pages that sell products, publish product reviews, and/or aggregate information from other sites).
   
   In the past, these product snippets were powered by schema.org Product Schema Markup. This is now no longer the case.

The Google Merchant Center feeds are no longer necessary for merchants to be eligible for these enhanced Product search features. Google has added more Product Schema properties (i.e. colours, size, material, pattern, audience, hasEnergyConsumptionDetails, etc.), which allows merchants to add more product details to their Schema Markup and achieve the rich results that drive traffic to their site. 

To help you monitor and manage your Product rich results, Google has introduced two new Search Console Reports. 

1. Merchant listing report
   This is a new report that identifies Schema Markup issues for free listing experiences in the search results. Merchants that sell products on their online should use this report.
2. Product snippets report
   This report replaces the previous Product report with adjustments related to the separation of the merchant listing report. The data from the previous Product report is still available within this report. The report identifies Schema Markup issues for product snippets in the search results. Sites that don’t sell products online but still publish pages with Product Schema Markup should use this report.

September Core and Product Review Update

This month, Google rolled out their September Core Update (the second broad core update of the year) and the Product Reviews Update. Both updates came after the Helpful Content Update finished rolling out on September 9, 2022. We have yet to correlate the impact of these updates with the fluctuations in the search results. However, we will continue to monitor and report on any fluctuations we’ve observed.

Google using Structured Data for Machine Learning

Marie Haynes and Alan Kent from Google released a podcast episode on Product Reviews this September. 

In the episode, Alan Kent said “They look at behaviour to decide if the review is helpful. The machine learning then looks at patterns to see if the review is helpful.” 

This wasn’t the first mention of machine learning from Google in the past year. 

In the podcast, “Structured Data what’s it all about” on April 7, 2022, Ryan Levering from Google said, “Most of our features over time migrate to that approach where we ingest it. Maybe we start with one approach where we’re just using ML. And then we eventually add markups so people have control. Or it’s the opposite way around. And we start– we bootstrap with markup in an eco-system approach where people are giving us data. And then we enhance coverage of the feature by adding ML long run.” (Ryan Levering @ 8:34)

To do machine learning, Google needs to broaden its data sources. They now get data from their crawls, Merchant Center, user clicks, and Structured Data.

Conclusion

Google is making a lot of updates to the algorithm and evolving how they are using machine learning to delight the user in their search experience. As a result of these changes, SEOs need to diversify their rich result portfolio, stay agile and be ready to evolve their content and Schema Markup to capitalize on the changes.

Schema Markup (aka Structured Data) helps search engines understand your content because you’re translating it into machine language. With Google relying more on machine learning, Schema Markup will increasingly be of greater importance for sites to communicate with Google’s machines and maintain their visibility on the SERP.

If you haven’t already implemented Schema Markup as part of your SEO strategy, what are you waiting for? Get in touch with us today to learn how Schema App can help your organization stand out in search through Schema Markup.

The post September 2022 Rich Results Weather Report Update appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

This August, we’ve observed some ups and downs in rich results across our customers. Our data scientist, Iram Fatima, and our Customer Success Team keep a close eye on the rich result performance across our customers so that we can dig into trends and explore opportunities for updating our strategy to capture more clicks and manage drops.

This month, we saw both ups and downs in several rich results including FAQ, Recipe and Video.

1. Decline in FAQ Rich Results

In the first half of August, 42% of our customers experienced a drop in clicks for their FAQ rich results across both mobile and desktop.

We first observed this decline with customers in the Healthcare industry. But we quickly saw customers across a wide range of industries with a similar downward trend on their FAQ rich results. We will be reviewing them weekly to see where the trend goes over time.

However, other fortunate SEOs have also reported seeing zero changes to their FAQ rich results.

I just checked several client sites that receive a lot of impressions and clicks for FAQs and I’m not seeing any drop. Just my 2 cents.

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 17, 2022

2. Improvement in Recipe Rich Results

Thankfully, the weather in the Structured Data world isn’t always gloomy.

83% of our customers in the healthcare industry observed a huge spike in Impressions and Clicks from their Recipe rich results in the first two weeks of August. These customers saw clicks grow at an average of 1030%, and impressions grow at an average of 3513% in comparison to the last two weeks of July.

3. Improvement in Video Rich Results

In other good news, we’re seeing 58.46% of our customers recover in clicks or impressions for their video rich results on desktop since the sudden decline in June when we saw video rich result volatility.

Earlier in June, we saw 70% of customers drop in clicks and impressions for their video rich results on desktop. In July, that drop was synonymous with all our customers. We hypothesized that this drop resulted from Google’s core update in May, affecting how Videos were shown on the Search Engine Result Page.

Is this the result of Google’s adjustment period after the May core update? We’ll continue to watch and explore the SERP composition.

4. Helpful Content Update

Last but not least, Google released a blog this month regarding their upcoming ‘Helpful Content Update’ as part of a broad effort to show more unique, authentic information in the search results. The goal of this update is to ensure people see more original and useful content that was written by people with expertise on the subject.

Here are 3 main themes we’ve identified from this upcoming ‘Helpful Content Update’:

1. E-A-T will play a huge role in this update

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Since 2019, Google has confirmed that E-A-T has been an important part of their algorithms and page quality rating.

One of the key factors affecting E-A-T is the Author E-A-T. Google has suggested that content written or produced by (real) people who have historically written about the topic will see their articles improve in ranking.

For example: Medical advice articles with high E-A-T should be written or produced by medical professionals or organizations with appropriate medical accreditation and expertise. The content should also be updated on a regular basis to reflect the latest findings.

Tip: You can use Structured Data to define the person’s authority (including their degrees, affiliations, etc) and connect those author profiles and details to the articles you are publishing.

2. You can use Structured Data on your high-quality content to better articulate the details of a topic

Sites that rely on tactics like keyword stuffing and bot-generated content to drive traffic are considered to have a search engine-first focus. These sites seek to produce content that would allow the page to rank rather than producing helpful content that would satisfy the searcher’s needs.

Sites with a search engine-first focus will likely see a significant drop in ranking after the upcoming “Helpful content update” as Google starts classifying the content as unhelpful.

How can you communicate the quality of your content to a search engine? 

Earlier this year, Google shared in their Search Off the Record podcast episode “Structured data: What’s it all about”, that they use structured data to help search engines understand content uniqueness.

Deploying structured data to the high-quality content on your site will allow search engines to better understand your content and how it relates to other parts of your website, or products.

Interested in learning how you can use structured data to highlight the uniqueness and specificity of your content? 

Watch our CEO, Martha’s ‘SEO in 2022’ podcast with Majestic to learn how you can markup your content to stand out in search.

3. Focus your site on providing specific content that answers the question

Generic websites that write about a wide variety of topics may also find it tough to rank after this update. Google has stated that the update will reward sites that have E-A-T on the topic. Focusing your site on a specific topic can position your site as an authoritative figure on the subject matter.

Google’s focus on rewarding sites that answer questions and meet the searcher’s intent is not new.

We’ve seen the search results focus on specific topical pages. Over the last year, we’ve seen generic and not specific enough category pages perform poorly.

Tip: You can identify topics and questions that people are searching for through Google Search Console Keywords, which in turn allows you to offer better, satisfactory answers to your searcher.

If the questions revolve around a specific topic, that’s even better! The topic could be about your services, products, industry problems or more. You can compile these questions and create a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section on your topical page to allow that page to be eligible for an FAQ rich result.

Conclusion

We are excited to see Google evolving the way rich results are shown in various parts of the search experience.

In addition, they are also updating their documentation to make certain rich results more accessible. This August, Google updated the Article structured data guidelines to include all articles, not just AMP Articles, in the Top Stories Carousel. More on this next month.

These changes mean that you have to manage your structured data actively, monitor the results and be ready to capture new opportunities as they arise. This is what we love doing at Schema App. We look forward to sharing our findings and helping you stay on your toes so that you can continue to navigate and succeed in this world of structured data.

The post August 2022 Rich Results Weather Report Update appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

Key Facts around Video Rich Results

• May – Through May, the majority of Schema App clients saw growth in Video Rich Results
• Early June – Starting in June, 70% of clients started to see a decrease in Video Rich Results. Interestingly, we’re also seeing the decrease in Video Rich Results as isolated to only desktop devices.  
• Late June – 30% of our clients didn’t see a drop until after June 30th. 
• Early July – All our clients saw a drop in clicks and impressions for their Video Rich Results. 
• Late July – 32% of our clients are seeing an improvement in Video Rich Results across all industries.
• Early August – 58.46% of our clients have seen an improvement in clicks or impression for their Video Rich Results.

Many of these pages affected are being indexed by Google for the video enhancements and are valid instances, but not awarded with a rich result on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). We saw the drop impact clients that used Youtube, Vimeo, Brightcove and other video hosting platforms.

The sudden decline in the Video Rich Results is ultimately incongruent with the announcements made in the last two Google IOs. In the last two Google IO Search sessions on search, the focus was on video schema markup. In 2021, John Mueller, senior webmaster trends analyst at Google, announced two new rich results – Clip markup and Seek markup, and in Google IO 2022, Dikla Cohen, Web Ecosystem Consultant, where focuses on showcasing videos in the SERP.

How does this affect your website? 

When comparing June to July, Video Rich Result impressions are down 43%, and Clicks are down 53% across all our clients.

The decrease in Video Rich Results on the desktop has resulted in a decrease in the number of impressions and clicks to the website. For businesses that rely heavily on these Video Rich Results to drive traffic, this can cause a reduction in revenue – as we’ve seen with some Schema App clients.

As of August 15, we are seeing an improvement in Video Rich Results across 58.46% of our clients and will continue to monitor the situation and update this article over the upcoming weeks.

Possible Reasons for the Sudden Drop in Video Rich Results

There are many reasons as to why a site might see a decline in their Video Rich Results but here are a few of our hypotheses as to why this is happening. 

Google’s Algorithm updates

Google released a core update this past May and the update officially finished rolling out on June 9, 2022. These core updates can often affect website rankings and visibility, and the decline in video rich results could be a bug from the update. 

However, with what little information Google provides about these updates, it is impossible to isolate the exact reason as to the changes to a website’s rankings or visibility.  It is interesting that we started seeing the decline starting June 11th, 2022. 

Google Favouring Youtube

Apart from the decline in video rich results, we’ve also noticed a change in how the video results are presented in the SERP.  

The standard video rich results that show up on the SERP tend to only feature Youtube videos. Moreover, the Video Rich Result directs users straight to the Youtube video page, rather than the web page that the video was embedded on. 

On the contrary, the ‘Video’ tab on the top of the SERP now shows video results that link directly back to the site that the video was embedded on or videos hosted on other video hosting platforms. 

Youtube is a Google product and this might be Google’s way of directing more traffic to Youtube rather than other sites. 

Google’s Response to the Decline in Video Rich Results

Daniel Waisberg, Search Advocate at Google, is looking into the potential bug but we have yet to see a response that this is a bug or an error. To date, we are still awaiting for a response from Google. 

Our Schema App Solution

At Schema App, we focus on strategy, high touch support and robust schema markup at scale. 

When it comes to creating a strategy for our clients, we always target multiple types of rich results to diversify their traffic sources. This reduces the risk of our clients being impacted by Google’s updates. 

As part of our high touch support, we are also constantly monitoring the performance of rich results across all our clients. When we see these types of changes happening or identify new markup opportunities, we help our clients stay agile by pivoting their strategy quickly and deploying new markups within minutes on our Schema App Highlighter tool. 

Get in touch with us today to learn how Schema App can help your organization stand out in search using structured data. 

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