Spammy Structured Data?!

[bpurdue]

Help!  I woke up this morning to a message from Google that says: "Spammy structured data for http://www.riddelllaw.com/ might be dropped from search results."  I am in over my head a bit and not sure what to do.  I looked at Webmaster tools and it says something about the author in the testimonials on my page.  The testimonials page is just a Wordpress Plugin - Testimonials Showcase.

Is the "spammy" result just indicated by errors in webmaster tools? Or could there be something else I am missing?  Is this something I can fix on my own or should I hire someone who actually knows what they are doing?  Thank you!!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Bridget,

Is there a plugin that you have installed recently for structured data?

Google did say a little while ago that spammy markup could be handed as a penalty, but it's a little difficult to know what is doing it.

Just took a quick look at your homepage in Google's structured data testing tool and this is what it shows (this error is repeated 3 times).

| author | A value for the author field is required. |

This might be something as simple as disabling the author option, but it's a bit hard to say without testing.

-Andy

[bpurdue]

Thanks.  That is the strange thing - I have had this plugin (and haven't added anything new) in at least year.  I am not sure how to markup the author field, but will look into.  I just tried to send you a private message, but I am not sure if it went through.  Thank you again for the quick response!