Google has recently started cracking down on sites that are abusing rich snippets by filling them with spammy text. Rich snippets are the few lines of text that appear under every search result. They are designed to give users a sense for what’s on the page and why it’s relevant to their query. However, some site owners are using them in a way that Google considers to be a violation of their quality guidelines.
A site owner recently posted in the Google Webmaster Help forums a notification he received from Google about spammy rich snippets on his site. Here’s what the notification looks like:
Markup on some pages on this site appears to use techniques such as marking up content that is invisible to users, marking up irrelevant or misleading content, and/or other manipulative behavior that violates Google’s Rich Snippet Quality guidelines.
This is the first reported instance of a site owner receiving a manual action related to rich snippets and/or structured markup, so it’s important to be aware of it so you don’t receive a penalty for either intentionally or unintentionally using spammy rich snippets on your site.
Within the discussion thread other forum users pointed out some things this particular site owner was doing wrong, which likely lead to him receiving a penalty. They are as follows:
- He used Authorship markup on content other than articles he authored.
- He marked up the same thing multiple times in different ways on the same page.
- He marked up things that are not visible on the page.
- He marked up a page with false publisher information and just dropped a link to his Facebook page.
These are just a few of the potential issues on his site that may have lead to receiving a penalty. As with anything else in the SEO world, it’s important to be as forthright and clear as possible, even when it comes to things like rich snippets. Be as honest and accurate as possible, and don’t stuff them with needless information.
How to use rich snippets and structured markup the right way
Rich snippets, when used right, are an incredibly powerful way to drive traffic to your site by letting users know that your content is exactly what they’re looking for.
I wrote a comprehensive post on this blog a few months ago discussing rich snippets, how to use them, and examples of what they look like when they’re done well. If you’re concerned about using rich snippets the right away, or want some tips on how to use them better, I highly suggest you check out this post.
If you have any questions about rich snippets and how to avoid penalties, feel free to ask me in the comments. Since this is an entirely new issue that Google hasn’t provided a lot of information about it’s difficult to know for sure what they consider to be spam when it comes to rich snippets, but I will do my best to help you out.
