Rich Snippets Not Showing? Check Out the Top 7 Reasons for That

All the SEO and website/ Google enthusiast know about structured data markup. This has proved to be one of the greatest tools to generate organic traffic. The structured data is a code that helps the search engine to add more details for users. These details are in the form of rich snippet.

They are basically used for loads of products mostly. They are very eye catching for a user. By adding the schema markup to your website, you will help the search engine to identify data that is valuable to the users.

There are many ways through which you can implement markup based on the specification of microdata. Yet, there are many cases where the rich snippets just don’t appear. And that happens even after implementing the schema structured data markup on the website.

There are loads of reasons that can really affect the visibility of the rich snippets in the Google search results. In this post, I will disclose some of the major reasons because of which the structured data markup simply doesn’t appear in the Google result.

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Let’s get started and observe what are these reasons,

1. Rich Snippets aren’t a Guaranteed Thing by Google.

Rich Snippets are one of the best ways to earn the user’s trust but to be honest it is not a Guaranteed thing even by Google. Most of us think that when we add the code to the website, Google will begin to show it as rich snippets. However, this is not the case at all.

Google updates its database to provide better relevant results all the time. There might be a possibility that your snippet is no longer relevant to the search query of the user. So, Google doesn’t give any type of guaranty that the snippet you added will always work.

So, you need to make sure that the snippet code is strategically designed to cover most of the relevant keywords.

2. Quality Standards were not met.

There are cases when your snippet code is not meeting the quality standards of Google. Google performs a hell lot of algorithm base and manual quality check of the to ensure whether the markup meets the relevancy standards or not. You can also refer to Google Webmasters to take a peek on the quality guidelines to ensure the relevancy and quality of the structured data markup of your website.

3. Is your marked-up content misleading?

This is also one of the quality guidelines by Google Webmasters. You need to take care of the relevancy of your structured data markup. For instance, take an illustration into account. If your website is about web development and you used the markup language to showcase your company’s rating, this will be a relevant case. On the other hand, if you opt for a review that is not relevant to your company (This is the case when someone tries to outplay Google by Affiliate links), then Google will definitely restrict your rich snippet to show up in Google search results.

Google made this snippet to enhance user’s experience. So, if your snippet would be misleading them to some other website or some spammy link, then Google will catch that and will not show your snippet in its search results.

4. May be the data is incorrectly marked up.

This is the most common case when your snippet is not showing in the result pages. There are many potential areas where the code can go wrong and Google wasn’t able to understand exactly what you want to represent.

Schema.org provides every insight about all the types of structured data markup that one will implement on their website.

Nesting is one of the most important concepts while marking up the structured data. It ensures that the HTML code identifies properly when a web page begins and ends to address a particular topic.

This is where most of you get things done wrongly. In this context, the most common mistake is HTML codes are closed pretty early. Have a look on some of the incorrect and correct ways of closing the HTML nodes,

Incorrect Example

<body itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/WebPage”>
<div itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Products”>
<span itemprop=”name”>Product Name</span>
</div>
<div itemprop=”aggregateRating” itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/AggregateRating”>
Rated<span itemprop=”ratingValue”>4.0</span>/5
Based on<span itemprop=”reviewCount”>12</span>customer reviews
</div>
</body>

Correct Example

<body itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/WebPage”>
<div itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Products”>
<span itemprop=”name”>Product Name</span>
<div itemprop=”aggregateRating” itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/AggregateRating”>
Rated<span itemprop=”ratingValue”>4.0</span>/5
Based on<span itemprop=”reviewCount”>12</span>customer reviews
</div>
</div>
</body>

The next mistake is very rudimentary that is the reason most of us commit that and leave that unreviewed. It is implementing data markup by unclosed HTML tags. Review your tags and look for any flaw in the closing and opening of the tags.

5. Too many markup languages are used.

It is well understood that there are loads of ways to implement structured data markups. The vocabulary of schema.org is being utilized with lots of other encodings such as Microdata, JSON-LD, and RDFa.

However, it is less commonly known that you should use only one language for one web page. It is because most of the time multiple languages will create a mess and the rich snippet will not display correctly.

6. You didn’t notify Google about the content markup.

You should know that the Google will not discover the content markup instantly. It will discover it when it will crawl your website.

In this case, you might want to notify Google to crawl your website via Google webmasters. This will dramatically reduce the wait time for your snippet to show in the Search Results.

7. Use of Profane Language.

Google never appreciate any use of slang or profane language. If you have used any type of vulgar language in your structured data markup, then you might not be able to see it ever in Google Search results. So, in order to make your snippet visible, make sure that your content is profane free.

Wrapping up

So, these are some of the most common reasons if your rich snippets are not showing up in the search results of Google. Just to make clear that you get it all, I am mentioning all the seven pointers again as a quick recap,

• Rich Snippets aren’t a Guaranteed Thing By Google.
• Your snippet code is not meeting the quality standards of Google.
• If your snippet is misleading the users to some other website or some spammy link, then Google will not show your snippet in its search results.
• There are many potential areas where the code can go wrong and Google wasn’t able to understand exactly what you want to represent.
• You should use only one language for one web page.
• You didn’t notify Google about the content markup.
• Google never appreciate any use of slang or profane language.

I hope you like my post. What’s your experience with Rich Snippets? Share it with me via comments and enlighten us about your unique experience. Till then, have a good one.

Author Bio: Lauren McLaren was born and raised in Australia. She is working as a blogger and professional Digital Marketer for Digital Muscle, affordable SEO Company in Sydney. She’s hardworking, competent and trustworthy. Her role within the company is to manage a team of SEO Experts. In her spare time, she loves to read, cook and watch movies.