Change is the only constant, and the same could be said about Schema Markup and rich results. From changes in FAQ rich results to the release of Schema.org v15, here are some observations and updates in the Schema Markup industry this October.

Rich Result Changes in October 2022

Product, Reviews and Video are steady

After a turbulent last few months, we are happy to report that we are seeing growth in Product rich results, and steady increases in clicks on Review Snippets and Video rich results. It is definitely a relief to see some calming results after the stormy summer.

We are also happy to start to be able to share some industry data. In 2022, we’ve seen the most rich results being awarded to our Enterprise customers in the area of Video, Product and FAQ.

Data source: Schema App – Schema Performance Analytics

FAQ Rich Results Continue to Change

FAQ is one of the rich results that has had significant fluctuations this year. We continued to see an impact on the FAQ rich results, which is congruent with other reports in the industry.

52.17% of our customers saw a drop in clicks for their FAQ rich results in the October however, impressions are increasing. The decrease in clicks is subtle, but not growing with impressions. We are seeing this across industries and are monitoring it closely to be able to attribute it to a specific strategy or content approach.

Data source: Schema App – Schema Performance Analytics

Other SEOs have observed this similar trend occurring in October but across a wider time frame. Is this the result of the October 2022 Spam update? The rollout was completed on October 21st, so the timing is off.

Is Google showing fewer FAQ rich results and maybe other results recently? https://t.co/F1idQOaN6J via @randymajors and @RankRanger pic.twitter.com/KSlXbV08wb

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) October 25, 2022

Barry for the win, with additional insight that another algorithm change had occurred on October 28th. This aligns more with the data we are seeing. There are additional changes going on with Google’s algorithm AFTER the spam update, and these changes are specifically impacting FAQ clicks.

Google search ranking algorithm update or adjustment on October 28th (unconfirmed) https://t.co/NfejjTKS4Y pic.twitter.com/mGmFa6olwK

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) November 1, 2022

@rustybrick It seems Google drastically reduced showing FAQ Rich Results in SER across the board about the same time as the Oct 19 spam rollout. Checked several queries on both desktop and mobile and only saw 1 site with a few FAQs appear. Any confirmation of this? Policy change?

— Randy Majors (@randymajors) October 24, 2022

Source: Marie Haynes Report

The good news is that the FAQ rich result has grown overall in 2022, and the early days of November are showing hopeful results. We’ll be monitoring performance week-over-week to see if there is any correlation with content or industry.

Data source: Schema App – Schema Performance Analytics

Google Updates in October 2022

Schema.org V15 Released with more properties for Products

Schema.org released another version with a focus on adding new properties in pending for products. One of the new properties to highlight is the positiveNotes and negativeNotes for use on Product. This property allows users to showcase the pros and cons of a product, and was created in support of a new structured data feature announced in August for Product Reviews.

Good news! Schema App already supports Schema.org v15 if you want to try out the new pros and cons new search feature.

Provide a site name on Google by adding WebSite Structured Data

When Google lists a page on the search engine results page, the result shows the name of the site that the page is from – also known as the site name.

Previously, Google would automatically generate a site name by using sources such as

• Content in <title> elements
• Heading elements, such as <h1> elements
• Og:site_name

This October, Google announced that you can indicate your preferred site name by adding WebSite Structured Data. The site names are currently supported at a domain level, and not at the subdomain or subdirectory level.  

These changes indicate Google’s increased use of Structured Data as a key source of information. 

New Image Structured Data Properties

Google has added 3 new Structured Data properties – creditText, creator and copyrightNotice – that can be used with the ImageObject type to provide support for image credits, copyright and creator information. 

“Previously, you could only provide image credit information with IPTC photo metadata.”

By adding these Structured Data properties, web publishers can simplify the way they add creator data and add it in a scalable way across their sites. 

According to Schema.org, this is what each property is for:  

• creditText: Text that can be used to credit person(s) and/or organization(s) associated with a published Creative Work.
• creator: The creator/author of this CreativeWork. This is the same as the Author property for CreativeWork.
• copyrightNotice: Text of a notice appropriate for describing the copyright aspects of this Creative Work, ideally indicating the owner of the copyright for the Work.”

Unlike the IPTC photo metadata, you will need to add Structured Data every time you use the photo on your site. 

What’s interesting about this new use of Structured Data is that it is being used beyond search. This information is helping Google understand the copyright of the image. Are more teams at Google using Structured Data beyond search features? Only time will tell. 

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.

Measure ROI of Schema Markup using Schema Performance Analytics

One of the things we **** about Schema Markup is that you can attribute clicks directly to this nerdy SEO strategy. To help our customers measure the impact, we’ve recently released our Schema Performance Analytics Page-Level Reporting Dashboard.

This new Page Level Report combines data from Google Search Console and the Schema App Highlighter and Editor, to provide users with more granular page-level insights on their Schema Markup performance. 

Users can also filter their data by groups of URLs to better understand how the Schema Markup is performing for different lines of business or departments. This allows our customers to better measure the ROI of Schema Markup on each business unit and the impact SEO has on their business outcomes. 

Read more about Schema Performance Analytics Page Level Report on our blog.

Conclusion

This last quarter, we have seen a record number of core algorithm changes from Google. 

We are seeing rich results – like FAQs – fluctuate, which further emphasizes the need for diversity in your Schema Markup portfolio so that you can not only weather these changes but also thrive in them. 

Want to hear more? Listen to Martha’s latest podcast on Voices of Search, on how you can manage your Schema Markup like a financial portfolio. 

Martha is the CEO and co-founder of Schema App. Schema App is an end-to-end Schema Markup solution that helps enterprise SEO teams create, deploy and manage Schema Markup to stand out in search. She is an active member of the search engine optimization community, and the work that she does through Schema App is helping brands from all over the world improve their organic search performance.