Richie
(Richie Rich)
April 5, 2026, 7:44am
1
Further to this bug last week:
Continuing the discussion from Either 'acceptedAnswer' or 'suggestedAnswer' should be specified :
I had this issue pop today suddenly after updating to this week’s latest build.
Any thoughts as to why it suddenly started? The site has been around for a decade and so has the page that’s affected by it. The topic has only one post (wiki) from the admin (it’s a notice FAQ topic).
And:
main ← fix/qa-page-schema-no-answers
merged 01:02PM - 02 Apr 26 UTC
Google Search Console reports acceptedAnswer/suggestedAnswer errors on topics th… at emit QAPage structured data with answerCount:0 and neither field present. This affects single-post topics, topics where the only replies are hidden or small action posts, and topics whose accepted answer has been hidden.
The fix introduces two checks:
1. A `has_eligible_answers?` query in SchemaUtils that verifies at least one visible, regular-type reply exists before emitting QAPage schema (both JSON-LD and microdata). Topics without eligible answers fall back to the default DiscussionForumPosting schema.
2. A `has_answers` policy in BuildSchemaMarkup that gates on the materialized accepted_answer/suggested_answers after they've been fetched, catching any edge cases the topic-level check might miss.
Additionally, `fetch_accepted_answer` now checks post visibility via `Guardian.new.can_see_post?` (anonymous perspective) so hidden accepted answers are excluded from schema output rather than being advertised to search engines. The `"answered only"` setting also uses this visibility check instead of just testing whether an answer_post_id exists.
https://meta.discourse.org/t/399525
I updated this morning to 2026.4.0-latest (97400099a5 ) but I’m still unable to validate the fixes with Google
My Google search console is showing:
Clicking through to the validation / fix steps:
And when I try to validate any of the fixes:
I get the same “affected pages were found” error for all three types.
Have I missed something?
2 Likes
davidb
(David B)
April 6, 2026, 10:44am
2
Thank you for reporting, we are looking into this issue and should have an update soon.
4 Likes
Richie
(Richie Rich)
April 6, 2026, 11:41am
3
Thanks @davidb very grateful
davidb
(David B)
April 7, 2026, 4:09pm
5
I merged a change that should fix most of the errors you are seeing (ie. missing name/answerCount). It turned out these values were missing from the microdata:
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/6e8876152c45c2bd7c2f1c0eb6a248f47de9f89c
The 3 problem urls in the last image appear to be a separate issue, 2 of them are emoji only posts with no text and the third is an image only post. But I ran them through the Schema markup validator by pasting the page source and all appear to have zero warnings or errors.
Possibly these 3 page issues will clear on a re-crawl.
5 Likes
Richie
(Richie Rich)
April 8, 2026, 12:45pm
6
Thanks David
Will update Discourse again on Friday and re-try
1 Like
3 errors seem to be fixed, but 1 is remaining + 6 lesser severity annotations, all about missing fields within the suggested/acceptedAnswer elements:
Validation started means the issue is solved. “Not Started” means I couldn’t start it, since the quick initial validation still fond these issues, and I could verify that in the actual page source.
The “text” and “datePublished” fields were actually added to tests with the commit (and our instance contains that commit), but probably at the wrong element? E.g. “datePublished” is expected at the mainEntity, while the tests check it at the suggested/acceptedAnswer?
3 Likes
Richie
(Richie Rich)
April 9, 2026, 1:42pm
8
Could we not auto-close this topic just yet, please?
1 Like
davidb
(David B)
April 9, 2026, 1:43pm
9
Thank you for sharing, I will take a look into this soon and drop another update.
4 Likes
Richie
(Richie Rich)
April 16, 2026, 7:11am
10
Are there any status updates you can share on this one from last week please, @davidb ?
davidb
(David B)
April 16, 2026, 5:33pm
11
I’ve made some further updates to tackle this in DEV: update solved schema for non text posts (#39253) · discourse/discourse@3b5874f · GitHub which was merged earlier today.
I will keep this topic open for a while to see if this change solves the issues experienced.
1 Like
Richie
(Richie Rich)
April 16, 2026, 5:49pm
12
Great, thanks for the update @davidb
I’ll take my Discourse offline tomorrow morning and update, then try again
Richie
(Richie Rich)
April 17, 2026, 6:29pm
13
It’s still failing on some I’m afraid
There are several thousand currently being checked by Google, I shall post the outcome of these in due course:
But these two are types are failing the pre-validation check, I can’t even run a full check on them:
If it helps, that last one is a post containing a YouTube video.
I’m not the only one with this issue, surely?
Richie
(Richie Rich)
April 19, 2026, 10:41am
14
Still failing I’m afraid
I had an email to say 1,600 had been resolved:
But there are still a few hundred that remain affected
And the same for the ‘answerCount’:
davidb
(David B)
April 19, 2026, 11:27am
15
Sorry to hear this. Can you share any urls so I can investigate?
I thought all of the issues you shared here were covered in my last commit that was merged, so maybe there is some other edge case.
Richie
(Richie Rich)
April 19, 2026, 3:26pm
16
Here are a bunch of copy/pastes from the Google Search Console list if it helps @davidb
[
](https://search.google.com/search-console/r/q-and-a/drilldown?resource_id=sc-domain:greyarro.ws)
|URL|Item name|Last crawled|
| --- | --- | --- |
|https://greyarro.ws/t/charging-the-remote-mavic-2/3809|N/A|18 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/searching-for-missing-persons/80386|N/A|18 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/what-can-make-a-gps-signal-poor-re-dji-neo/89332?page=2|N/A|18 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/disadvantages-of-keeping-already-bound-mavic-3/52125?page=2|N/A|18 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/avata-2-flying-backwards/79111|N/A|18 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/pairing-mavic-mini-to-controller/84503|N/A|17 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/recommended-mini-5-pro-settings-for-smoother-gain-expo-yaw-camera-and-more/101901|N/A|17 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/power-line-height/29785|N/A|17 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/why-not-hlg-on-dji-mini-4-pro/102886|N/A|17 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/cheap-mini-drone-for-indoors-recommendations/91541|N/A|17 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/tripltek-tablet-feedback-from-owners-and-general-discussion/31144?page=2|N/A|16 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/ipad-pro-and-dng-files/73819|N/A|16 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/osd-not-shoing-up-dji/71740|N/A|16 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/theoretical-scenario/87594|N/A|16 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/where-would-the-address-linked-to-my-dji-account-be-if-anywhere/93152|N/A|16 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/gusts-gusts-gusts-what-maximum-wind-gust-speed-do-you-consider-safe-for-flying/106683|N/A|16 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/can-i-fly-my-drone-in-the-rain/21853|N/A|15 Apr 2026|
|https://greyarro.ws/t/flytron-strobon-strobe-lights/8504?page=4|N/A|15 Apr 2026|
Richie
(Richie Rich)
April 21, 2026, 7:19am
17
Google sent me an email today with a new issue added that wasn’t in their list last week
Duplicate field 'datePublished' (in 'mainEntity')
At the moment the Duplicate field 'datePublished' (in 'mainEntity') only relates to a single URL of:
https://greyarro.ws/t/live-video-relayed-to-phone-very-laggy-now/39741
As per:
Also, if this is of use, while not a critical error like the others they offer this “Improve item appearance” section which lists lots of “Missing field” values: