“OF COURSE IT DOES! STRUCTURED DATA IS THE MOST IMPORTANT SEO RANKING FACTOR.”
Yelled the SEO specialists in unison. But are they right?
Is it possible that Google doesn’t give a stuff about some structured data at all? Well if the latest information from John Mueller is to be believed – that may be the case.
Speaking in a recent video conference that you can find by searching “English Google SEO office-hours from December 4, 2020” on the Google Search Central YouTube Channel, John Mueller provided a surprising insight into the weight of structured Data in ranking content on Google.
A website owner submitted the following question to Mueller in the video conference:
“Can additional properties in schema, which are not mentioned in Google documentation, give any benefits? Especially in the case of AMP and non-AMP article schema. If we add AMP article properties on non-AMP pages is there any harm or benefit?”
In case you are wondering, AMP article schema refers to a specific type of structured data that usually pertains to publishing or news sites.
According to Mueller, Google can get all of the information that it required from the page itself, and rarely does it need to look at structured data to find anything that it could not already find on the page.
Google’s structured data information pack provides extensive information about how the search engine uses structured data. To find out about all the types of structured data that Google supports, you can read about it on their Overview of Search appearance topics web page.
What is Unsupported Structured Data?
There are thousands of different types of structured data. Unless you’re an SEO expert well versed in every aspect of schema, it is unlikely you will be familiar with all of them.
By virtue, the schema.org vocabulary includes all types of structured data that relate to recipes, people, places, and things from around them web. Schema mark-up is commonly used to provide Google with greater information about on-page content. Adding supported structured data to your site allows search engines to understand page content and display it in search results easily.
Unsupported structured data refers to the hundreds of other structured data types that are not supported by Google. It does not make them invalid; it simply means that Google does not support them when deciphering a page. Previously, Google has (loosely) indicated that these types of schema may be used in reading a page.
Is Unsupported Structured Data A Waste of Time?
Not necessarily, but perhaps it does not play the same role that some SEOs may have suspected when it comes to boosting results in the SERPs.
Not all structured data is created equally. And, as so, not all structured data is going to have the same, positive impact on search visibility.
Google may be able to tell everything that it needs to organise content in the search engine pages without even looking at structured data. There is nothing wrong with specifying structured data, and it won’t inhibit search positioning. That being said, unless Google is not able to find all of the necessary content on your web page – then it may not be useful.
Learn More About What John Mueller Says About Unsupported Structured Data
Want to geek out with John Mueller? The below video shows the entire correspondence where John Mueller addresses the question around unsupported structured data. Find out exactly what Google has to say on the matter.
