google data highlighter
TRANSCRIPT
Why Rich Snippets?• Rich Snippets improve the web search results & ultimately give the users
information in a structured pattern
• While there is no way we can be sure that big G will always shows our information in snippets, one thing we can be sure of is Google definitely checks the site for marked-up content while crawling
• In order to be eligible for rich snippets, you should mark up your site’s pages using one of three supported formats:
1. MicroData2. MicroFormats3. RDFa
Why Google Introduced Data Highlighter & Structured Markup Helper?
• Data Highlighter is a point-and-click tool that can be used by anyone authorized for your site in Google Webmaster Tools
• No changes to HTML code are required. Instead, you just use your mouse to highlight and "tag" each key piece of data on a typical event page of your website
• Easier & efficient way for site webmasters to structure the content on the site especially for those who are not comfortable with HTML format
• Structured Markup Helper facilitates direct changes to the HTML code using highlighting of data on the site
Pre-requisite for Using Google Data Highlighter
• Check sitemap.xml & robots.txt are updated & have no errors before using the Data Highlighter
• Ensure your site has been verified by Google Webmaster
SUPPORTED DATA TYPES
• Articles• Events• Products• Local Businesses• Movies• Restaurants• Software Applications• TV Episodes
SITES USING ARTICLE TAGS
• Techcrunch• Techbase• Cnet• SearchEngineWatch
ARTICLESTags
•Title•Author•Date Published•Image•Category•Average Rating
SITES USING EVENT TAGS
• timeoutmumbai.net• eventsofmumbai.com• asklaila.com• burrp.com• timescity.com• meetup.com
EVENTSTags
•Name•Date•Location Venue Address•Image•Official URL•Category•Performer•Ticket Type Price
SITES USING BUSINESS TAGS
• justdial.com• www.indiamart.com• biz.yelp.com
LOCAL BUSINESSESTags
•Name•Address•Telephone•Opening Hours•Category•Image•URL•Average Rating Rating Votes•Review Reviewer Review Text Review Rating Review Date
SITES USING MOVIE TAGS
• imdb.com• ndtv.com• youtube.com• rediff.com/movies
MOVIESTags
•Name•Image•Director•Screenplay By•Actor•Date Released•Genre•Rating•Duration•Official URL•Average Rating Rating Value & Best Rating VotesReview Reviewer Review Text Review Rating Review Date
SITES USING RESTAURANT TAGS
• burrp.com• zomato.com• yelp.com
RESTAURANTSTags•Name•Address•Telephone•Opening Hours•Cuisine•Image•URL•Reservation URL•Menu URL•Average Rating Rating Votes•Review Reviewer Review Text Review Rating Review Date
SITES USING SOFTWARE APPLICATION TAGS
• cnet.com• downloads.zdnet.com• www.warriorforum.com
SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS• Name• Image• Category• Publisher• Official URL• Download URL• Operating System• Date Published• Software Version• Average Rating Rating Votes • Review Reviewer Review Text Review Rating Review Date
SITES USING EPISODE TAGS• www.sho.com/• www.tv.com/shows/episodes/• www.youtube.com• www.mtv.com/
EPISODESTags
•Series Name•Episode Name•Season Number•Episode Number•Image•Director•Actor•Air Date•Official URL•Average Rating
1. Log in to your webmaster tools account2. Click the optimization menu on the left side navigation3. Select "Data Highlighter"4. Click the blue button – “Start Highlighting“5. Following this step you have two options – one which allows you to tag
that particular page along with a set of other similar pages or just that particular page
6. The next step is to enter the URL – first page of the set or just that page
7. Highlight one type of structured data at a time (name, date, location, etc.) using your mouse
8. Right click the highlighted information and select the type of data that is highlighted
9. Highlight all of the pertinent data on the page and watch it appear in the right hand column.
10. click the red “Next” button on the top right of the screen.11. View your final information and if correct, click the red “Publish”
button on the top right of the screen.
HOW DO YOU USE DATA HIGHLIGHTER
DEMO
SINGLE PAGE SET
• When you want to highlight different type of pages on a particular site, we highlight these pages in different sets where each page is a single page set
• Single page set will handle events or products from one web page
MULTIPLE PAGE SET
• When you want to highlight a group of similar pages on your site, we can use a multiple page set
• A multiple page set can handle up to 500,000 web pages of events and products
URL PATTERN & WILD CARD
Consider a page set to be created for a site www.abc.com
Wild Card in Google Data Highlighter is similar to Regex in Google Analytics
Consider the categories www.abc.com/food/pizza/123.html /food/sushi/456.html /food/burger/123.html
Using a wild card we can create page set covering all the subcategories-
www.abc.com/food/pizza/* /food/*/* /*/*/*
ERRORS ENCOUNTERED WHILE CREATING A PAGE SET
Error: URL Pattern doesn’t include start page
Solution: If you specified the following URL as the starting page:http://www.abc.com/food/pizza/123.html and you specify the following for a URL pattern:http://www.abc.com/food/*the "Pattern does not include start page" message will display because the pattern you specified excludes the /pizza/subpath. While the specified pattern includes pages such ashttp://www.abc.com/food/891.html andhttp://www.abc.com/food/125.html,it excludes pages such ashttp://www.abc.com/food/pizza/123.html.To highlight URLs containing the /pizza/ subpath, use a pattern such ashttp://www.abc.com/food/pizza/* orhttp://www.abc.com/food/*/*
ERRORS ENCOUNTERED WHILE CREATING A PAGE SET
Error: URL Pattern includes too many pages. The URL pattern you specified includes more than 500,000 pages.
Solution:if your site contained information about food underhttp://www.abc.com/food/pizza/...andhttp://www.abc.com/food/sushi/...Instead of specifying a URL pattern of http://www.abc.com/food/*/*, you could create two page sets with a smaller scope, such ashttp://www.abc.com/food/pizza/*andhttp://www.abc.com/food/sushi/*
ERRORS ENCOUNTERED WHILE CREATING A PAGE SET
Error: URL Pattern includes pages that you don’t manage
Solution:The URL pattern you specified includes pages that are not part of the verified site on Webmaster Tools. For example, ifhttp://www.abc.com/food/pizza/*is registered as a verified site on Webmaster Tools, a URL pattern ofhttp://www.abc.com/food/*/*will also includehttp://www.abc.com/food/sushi/*which is not registered as part of a verified site.Specify a narrower URL pattern, such as http://www.abc.com/food/pizza/*
ERRORS ENCOUNTERED WHILE CREATING A PAGE SET
Error: Pattern does not match any pages
Solution:Data Highlighter didn't find any pages that match the pattern you specified.
Check for typos and make sure you've entered the correct URL. If you still see this message after checking for typos, try to expand the scope of the URL pattern. For example, changehttp://www.abc.com/food/pizza/*tohttp://www.example.com/food/*/*
DELETING A PAGE SETIf you no longer want Data Highlighter to extract data for your pages, or if your site has changed significantly and you need to redo the tagging, delete the page set.
However once you delete a page set, you cannot recover it.
1. View the page set's Publish page:• On the Webmaster Tools home page, click the site.• On the Dashboard, click Search Appearance.• Click Data Highlighter.• Click the name of a page set.
2. Click the trash button
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DATA HIGHLIGHTER AND STRUCTURED DATA MARKUP HELPER
• Data Highlighter points and clicks on a sample web page to indicate its key data fields.
• Structured Data Markup Helper shows exactly what micro-data annotations to add to the page’s HTML code
• Structured Data Markup Helper shows you how to update your site so that Google can understand the data it contains
• Once Google understands the data on your site, your data can be presented more attractively and in new ways
• Markup Helper can also show you how to change your email templates so Gmail can present the data in your email in new and useful ways
• According to Google, it takes between 5 and 10 manually tagged pages with the data highlighter for their algorithms to understand the patterns on your website
• It also may take some time for these results to appear in Google’s search engine results pages
• If you have used the tool properly, and considerable time has passed with no results, your website may be facing other SEO issues that need to be addressed first
• However there is no surety that big G will show your structured data in snippets
EVEN AFTER USING HIGHLIGHTER WHY DOES MY DATA NOT SHOW UP IN SERPs?
CASE STUDIES
What’s the challenge?• While developing the html code for rich
snippets or even data highlighting on the site, the biggest challenge on such e-commerce portals is the vast number of pages, their different data structures & the complexity of the internal linking of these pages
• This makes it difficult for Google to select all the similar pages of the site to ensure data is highlighted for all the relevant pages in a multiple page set
Categories
Sub-Categories
The sub-categories for Clothing, Footwear, Watches & Bags, Wallets & Belts are structured in a similar way. Thus these categories can be highlighted using the same page set. Similarly the sub-categories for Mobiles & Tablets, Laptops & Accessories, Cameras & Audio Players & Speakers are structured in the same format.
The structure of the pages on Flipkart is quite similar. This makes it easier for the blog webmaster to highlight multiple pages in the same set
Content Structuring
CHALLENGE IN URL PATTERN
Clothing
Footwear
Watches
Bags, Wallets & Belts
www.flipkart.com/*/*/*/*
URL Pattern for ClothingURL Pattern for FootwearURL Pattern for WatchesURL Pattern for Bags, Wallets & Belts
www.flipkart.com/mens-clothing/*/*/
www.flipkart.ccom/mens-footwear/*/*/*/
www.flipkart.com/watches/*/*/*
www.flipkart.com/mens-clothing/*/*/
www.flipkart.ccom/mens-footwear/*/*/*/
Categories
Sub-Categories
The categories as well the sub-categories are structured in a different style. For example – Fashion & Motors have content structured in a different style. But also Cars & Trucks & Motorcycles in Motors have different content structures.
Content Structure needs to be modified for enabling similar page classification or data highlighting can be done for a selected important pages on the site.
Content Structuring
Categories
Sub-Categories
Content Structuring
The structure of the pages on Naaptol is also similar. This makes it easier for the blog webmaster to highlight multiple pages in the same set
All categories & sub-categories are structured in a similar way. Thus these categories can be highlighted using the same page set.
BEST PRACTICES• While tagging - start at the top of the page and
work your way down towards the bottom.
• After you tag enough data, Data Highlighter will guess and automatically tag the rest of the page
• Tag the pages consistently when possible. For example, if your pages display event locations at both the top and bottom of each page, always tag the address at the top.
• If pages are missing data, you can supply defaults for the missing data by clicking Add missing values from the gear menu.
• The defaults will be used for all pages in the page set, so make sure that the data applies to all pages in the page set.
• If you tag an event name that also happens to be a hypertext link, Data Highlighter automatically uses the link's URL for the event. For example, if you tag an event name as:
<a href="http://example.com/eventName">My Event Name</a>, then Data
Highlighter uses "http://example.com/eventName" as the event URL
• Data Highlighter automatically uses the URL only if the URL points to a page in your page set
• The URL will not display in the My Data Items column. You can confirm that the URL was added by viewing the structured data page
• If you explicitly tag a different URL for the event, Data Highlighter will use the URL that you tag.
BEST PRACTICES
SOME IMPORTANT POINTS• If you've already gone through a few rounds of tagging and Data Highlighter
still doesn't understand your site, try starting over and creating a page set with just one page.
• If that succeeds, create a single-page page set for each important page on your site. If this doesn't succeed, you'll need to use HTML markup instead of Data Highlighter.
• You can use the Structured Data Markup helper to embed structured data right onto webpages, as the tool provides micro-data annotations you copy into the page’s HTML.
• You can then use this information to tag similar pages on your site.
THANK YOU