Schema - Has it worked for you?

[MikeRoberts]

Hi all! For a while now I've been trying to convince the higher ups that Schema (or related semantic markup languages) would be a plus for our sites. Predominantly we're in ecommerce and so far I still haven't noticed any of our competitors really using Schema. So I was asked to hold off on it until other projects had been handled. But now the coder I had been working closely with has moved to another job so I basically need to re-explain all of this to someone else. But that's not really the point of this discussion post.

I recently read Barry Schwartz's post on the Google Structured Data Markup Helper Tool over on Search Engine Land [link] and thought it'd be a good time to bring up Schema to management again. But first, I wanted to ask how Schema has worked for the rest of you. Have you seen any increases in clickthroughs? Have rich snippets in Google made you more visible? Have you seen a decent ROI for the time spent on implementing it? Are you seeing an increase in people implementing it across your verticals? Have you found certain types of semantic data are less useful than others? Any tips, tricks, pointers concerning their use and implementation for those who are considering it? Any good case studies you can share?

Thanks all!

[QuarterPie]

Iv recently (about 20 days ago) updated my website and added scheme for local business but yet to see any effects. In fact, the rankings have dropped for what I entered as business description.

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Mike,

I have seen some good results with local business and breadcrumb markup for visibility. The jury is still out on product markup and I have not seen it used much in the search results that I track. That being said, the implementation is usually pretty quick and painless so no real reason not to implement at least the basics.

[Ant71]

Ive had some good results by purely putting a rel author in there linked to my Google+ page. Just having my photo next to the serps entry stands out and encourages more clicks, even though im not top two for the keyword. So far this month ive had more traffic compared to whole of last month.

[MikeRoberts]

We had considered Rel=Author for our blogs but our regular blogger also does freelance for some sites that we might not want to have tied to our sites (nothing bad just not things that mesh well with the image we want to portray). So that idea was scrapped.

[MikeRoberts]

I was thinking management might be more up to letting me toy with Schema if I chose a product line on one of our sites that has decent but not exemplary sales & traffic to test the Product schema on. Problem being that since we haven't seen competitors do it yet I don't have an adequate way to show them that it will be a good move for us in order to overtake anyone edging us out and they also don't want me giving our competitors any ideas that would inadvertently help them out by copying us.

[joseph.chambers]

You could always change his name to an alias as a ghost writer for someone important in the company?

[David-E-Carey]

I have over 60 pages on my site identified by Google in GWT as having structured data with 4 types listed but overall since employing this to the site I've not seen anything that I can with confidence say that by employing schema it has benefited or hindered the site.

Hoping to reap what I've sown in due course.

Actually can I add though that on the pages where I've been adding adding schema I have noticed that in the SERPs these pages do not serve the information listed in the itemprop e.g. description but it is serving the information listed in the first H1 tag of each page. So at the moment I've been making sure the

text makes relative sense and is optimised for specific search terms. I was not expecting to see this but for others it might be worth looking at your pages in GWT where you have started to use schema, view what Google has on them and export them and review.

Would love to hear from others on this as well.