Rich Snippet Date Removal

[stukerr]

Hey Mozzers,

I'm having a real problem getting some rich snippet data to go away! Normally i'm all for it, but in this case it's giving our department page a video rich snippet and also a really super old date (i'm not sure if this is connected with the video rich snippet, but it showed up at the same time).

The SERP is here: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=pool+table&pws=0&hl=en&num=10

We are 3rd for our page http://www.libertygames.co.uk/store/pool_tables/

I can't find the date Google is using anywhere on the page, in the headers or file dates or anything. I've even removed the video markup and removed the page from the video sitemap, the rich snippet testing tool confirms this : http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.libertygames.co.uk%2Fstore%2Fpool_tables%2F

Does anyone have any ideas why this might be showing up or if there is a way to speed up getting it off there and our old meta description back? I'm pretty sure it's killing our click-throughs.

Thanks in advance,

Stuart

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Hmm odd. You don't have a video sitemap set up do you?

You can try encrypting or obfuscating the code that displays the video in order to hide it from G.

[stukerr]

Hey,

We do have a video sitemap, but that video isn't listed in it

Maybe i'll change the code and rename the video, see if that does it and then give the obfuscator a go...

[PhilNottingham]

First thing to say is that this might be really tricky. I've previous come across several instances of Google basically not removing video snippets - even when videos are removed from the page and the content is completely refreshed.. it seems like, right now, once you've got a video indexed, it's hard to get that removed.

The other thing to suggest is that your authorship mark-up is pretty spammy and not appropriate. "Liberty Games" are not an author and shouldn't be getting that snippet - so I can imagine image recognition seeing that your thumbnail isn't a human face and therefore choosing to ignore this implementation and provide the video instead consistently.

In terms of removing the video result - you basically want to refresh and resubmit everything so Google recrawls and reindexes. Resubmit your Video sitemap, make some adjustments on the page (including removing the video) then resubmit that via GWMT. No guarantees though unfortunately, as I mentioned - this can be a tough one!

[stukerr]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for your response - and also your awesome talk at BrightonSEO - as far as the authorship markup is concerned we shouldn't have authorship markup on that page but we should have publisher markup, should that really only be on the homepage then? I've read a few different things about it (we put it on all pages as technically we are the publishers of all the pages on the site).

As for the video, i'll try what you suggested, I don't mind the video itself being there it's more the date in 2007 that makes the content look way older than it actually is! But yeah thanks for the advice, i'll keep at it!

Stu

[PhilNottingham]

Hi Stu,

Apologies - I assumed this was author and didn't check for the publisher mark-up.

I appreciate this is a bit of a hot topic and truly nobody has a great answer right now - but I don't think rel="publisher" should be used for anything that isn't in some sense journalistic. Category pages, product pages, home pages etc aren't really authored by an organisation - but, for example, "the beginners guide to SEO" on Moz absolutely is and should have the rel="publisher" mark-up attributed. Essentially - I'd define it as "collaborative content" where there's more than one author.

However, I'll back track on my previous point - I don't think your implementation here will be causing you issues, though all the video points remain.

Cheers,

Phil

[stukerr]

Hi Phil,

Yeah fair point re the publisher tag, but like you say there is a lot of debate about exactly how to implement it, but i'll definitely try and refine it's use if I can.

Cheers for the video advice, i'll keep working on it.

Stu