Help with Schema & what's considered "Spammy structured markup"
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Hello all!
I was wondering if someone with a good understanding of schema markup could please answer my question about the correct use so I can correct a penalty I just received.
My website is using the following schema markup for our reviews and today I received this message in my search console. UGH...
Manual Actions
This site may not perform as well in Google results because it appears to be in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
Site-wide matches Some manual actions apply to entire site
<colgroup><col class="JX0GPIC-d-h"><col class="JX0GPIC-d-x"><col class="JX0GPIC-d-a"></colgroup>
| | Reason | Affects |
| |Spammy structured markup
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 Rich Snippet Quality guidelines. Learn more. |
I have used the webmasters rich snippets tool but everything checks out. The only thing I could think of is my schema tag for "product." rather than using a company like tag? (https://schema.org/Corporation). We are a mortgage company so we sell a product it's called a mortgage so I assumed product would be appropriate.
Could that even be the issue? I checked another site that uses a similar markup and they don't seem to have any problems in SERPS. http://www.fha.com/fha_reverse shows stars and they call their reviews "store"
OR could it be that I added my reviews in my footer so that each of my pages would have a chance at displaying my stars?
All our reviews are independently verified and we just would like to showcase them. I greatly appreciate the feedback and had no intentions of abusing the markup.
From my site:
All Reverse Mortgage 4.9 out of 5 301 Verified Customer Reviews from eKomi| |
| | [https://www.ekomi-us.com/review-reverse.mortgage.html](<a class=)" rel="nofollow" title="eKomi verified customer reviews" target="_BLANK" style="text-decoration:none; font-size:1.1em;"> |
| | imgs/rating-bar5.png" /> |
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| | All Reverse Mortgage |
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| | 4.9 out of 5 |
| | 301 Verified Customer Reviews from eKomi |
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I don't know the answer to your question. However, I can say that LOTS of sites have lost their review stars triggered by schema in the past couple of months. For some sites the stars "just disappeared" and other sites received "manual spam penalty" messages from Google with language similar to what you posted above.
Some companies who offer the review services are not helpful when contacted directly and asked what to do about the problem... and Google's response to reconsideration requests often contain no explicit information.
You are not alone. Google seems to think that webmasters should be able to divine meaning from their messages.
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I think it may have to do, as you guessed, with the use of Product schema. You should try Organization schema. If you have an actual product landing page, with a price and Add to Cart button, that would be where you would put the Product schema, but only put reviews about the actual reverse mortgage product. Most of the reviews on the home page seem to be about the company as a whole.
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Thanks for your feedback! Turns out that wasn't it. I wonder, could having this in a footer of my site which is trying to show ratings on all pages of my site considered to be the spammy part?
To: Webmaster of <a target="_blank">https://reverse.mortgage/</a>,
Google has reviewed your site in response to your reconsideration request. Based on this review, Google believes that your site still violates Google Webmaster Guidelines. To resolve all manual actions, review your site again, correct the necessary items, and file another reconsideration request.
How to fix this problem:
| 1 |
Review the violations on your site
Use the Manual Actions Viewer to identify what manual actions are applied to your site.
Fix any issues listed
Use the details in the Manual Actions Viewer to help you fix outstanding issues. If your site was hacked, use Security Issues to find more details.
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| 3 |Submit a reconsideration request
Include any details or documentation that can help us understand the changes made to your site.
|
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How do you know that wasn't it? I'm just curious so I can learn from it.
If you're using organization Schema, it should be OK to show on every page. If you're using Product schema it should only show on a page where they can buy the product.
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I had it set before to product and then made the change to Organization
My markup is below. Then, I asked for a reconsideration stating I was unaware of the difference and showed that I made the change to Organization they denied my reconsideration. I am absolutely in the dark on this because the response is simply to refer to Webmaster guidelines and they don't give anything specific to what I am doing wrong to receive this manual penalty. I'm not completely panicking because my SERP rankings have not been affected by this but I am worried that I'll never be able to show review stars again.
| |
| | imgs/rating-bar5.png" style="vertical-align:middle;" /> |
| | [https://www.ekomi-us.com/review-reverse.mortgage.html](<a class=)" rel="nofollow" title="eKomi verified customer reviews" target="_BLANK" style="text-decoration:none; font-size:1.1em;"> |
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| | All Reverse Mortgage |
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| | |
| | 4.9 out of 5 |
| | 301 Verified Customer Reviews from eKomi |
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Thank you so much for your feedback!
I changed my markup to organization rather than product and then asked for a reconsideration and was turned down without any specific reason except to refer to the Webmaster guidelines.
So I'm at a loss... Thankfully none of my rankings have moved but I am afraid I will never be able to show my reviews again.
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Of course they show my stars on the adwords network no problem! Lol
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Ain't that the truth.
A good rule of thumb might be: If there's a BUY button that adds an item on that page to a shopping cart, use Product schema on that page. If that buy button is on every page of your site for the same product, it's going to seam suspicious coming from anyone but a household brand.
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Well I changed to organization after I received the notice of penalty and then after correcting my site I asked for a reconsideration and was denied stating that site still apears to be outside of webmaster guidelines with some type of spammy schema markup.
At a total loss. Schema markup produces no errors in testing against Google's rich snippet tool and the tag is no longer product.
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I'm sorry to hear that and can understand your frustration. Sometimes the way Google treats legitimate businesses in certain hyper-competitive industries is unfortunate. You're guilty until proven innocent.
I did not see anything wrong with your code. Maybe the manual reviewer didn't clear their cache? Maybe they were looking at a different URL than me, which still had the product schema without a buy button. Aggregate rating is clearly documented as being compatible with the Organization Schema type, and is described as "The overall rating, based on a collection of reviews or ratings, of the item."
If this were my site the next thing I would try is removing the Schema from every page except your home page. Maybe someone else has experienced this first-hand and will respond with a more helpful answer.
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Welp! I just received an approval to my reconsideration request. So it turns out it is not wise to create a sitewide schema markup for your companies ratings. I guess each page should have its own unique markup and organization ratings belong on one page only.
Thank you guys for looking into this and giving me your feedback. -Cliff
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No problem Cliff. I hope you found it helpful, and I'm happy to hear this has been cleared up for you. It's something I'll keep in mind if anyone else has a similar issue.
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