Google structured data for forums and profile pages

dfabulich · November 27, 2023, 7:33pm

Google just announced a new way for forum sites to tag their content as “structured data” for SEO purposes.

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/11/discussion-and-profile-markup

New in structured data: discussion forum and profile page markup

Monday, November 27, 2023

Today we’re announcing support for profile page and discussion forum structured data for use in Google Search, including new reports in Search Console. This markup works with Google Search features that are designed to show first-person perspectives from social media platforms, forums, and other communities. Implementing this structured data will help ensure what Search shows in these features is as accurate and complete as possible.

It would be great if Discourse were to add support for these. (They support JSON-LD and microdata.)

4r33 · November 27, 2023, 7:38pm

That’s cool (this is more confusing than the forums)

Tiago_santos · November 27, 2023, 8:46pm

@Falco Given this update where Google identifies members, wouldn’t it be ideal to have member profiles without noindex in the discourse?

Soenneker · November 28, 2023, 12:39am

Discourse definitely should support this!

abrambailey · November 28, 2023, 5:45pm

I would also love to see this one!

Falco · November 28, 2023, 5:53pm

Ain’t we using that already for many years?

github.com/discourse/discourse

app/views/topics/show.html.erb

ee5bdb343


      
                    <a href='<%= "#{Discourse.base_url}/tag/#{tag.name}" %>' class='discourse-tag' rel="tag"><%= tag.name -%></a><% if i < @tags.size - 1 %>, <% end %>
                  <% end %>
                </div>
              </div>
            <% end %>
          </div>
          
          <%= server_plugin_outlet "topic_header" %>
          
          <%- if include_crawler_content? %>
            <div itemscope itemtype='http://schema.org/DiscussionForumPosting'>
              <meta itemprop='headline' content='<%= @topic_view.title %>'>
              <% if @topic_view.topic.category.present? %>
                <meta itemprop='articleSection' content='<%= @topic_view.topic.category.name %>'>
              <% end %>
              <meta itemprop='keywords' content='<%= @tags.map(&:name).join(', ') %>'>
              <div itemprop='publisher' itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization">
                <meta itemprop='name' content='<%= SiteSetting.company_name.presence || SiteSetting.title %>'>
                <% if application_logo_url.present? %>
                  <div itemprop='logo' itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject">
                    <meta itemprop='url' content='<%= application_logo_url %>'>

Is the new thing here only the profile part?

Jagster · November 28, 2023, 6:30pm

Kind of yes. It has tailored a bit better suitable for social medias, I reckon.

dfabulich · November 28, 2023, 10:07pm

Y’all can check your Google Search Console report, but when I go to https://search.google.com/search-console/r/discussion-forum and check my forum, I see this:

Why items are invalid:

Either “text”, “image”, or “video” should be specified

Missing field “datePublished”

Missing field “author”

Improve item appearance

Missing field “url”

Missing field “text” (in “comment”)

So there does appear to be more work to do here.

rrit · December 17, 2023, 4:21pm

1. `itemprop="text"`

Just always add itemprop="text" here, as articleBody is not specified (anymore?) for DiscussionForumPosting.

github.com/discourse/discourse

app/views/topics/show.html.erb

6f3c498b8


      
          <div class='post' itemprop='<%= post.is_first_post? ? 'articleBody' : 'text'  %>'>
            <%= post.hidden ? t('flagging.user_must_edit').html_safe : post.cooked.html_safe %>
          </div>

2. `mainEntityOfPage`

mainEntityOfPage must only be set once for DiscussionForumPosting and never for the multiple Comment:
e.g. check for post.is_first_post

github.com/discourse/discourse

app/views/topics/show.html.erb

6f3c498b8


      
          
          <link itemprop="mainEntityOfPage" href="<%= post.topic.url %>">

3. `itemprop="url"`

Add itemprop="url" to the itemscope of DiscussionForumPosting.
This ensures that comments on subpages (…?page=2) are bound to the main topic page.

github.com/discourse/discourse

app/views/topics/show.html.erb

6f3c498b8


      
          <div itemscope itemtype='http://schema.org/DiscussionForumPosting'>
            <meta itemprop='headline' content='<%= @topic_view.title %>'>

<link itemprop="url" href="???">

post.topic.url is not set here. Is there something like @topic_view.url?

Important: the itemprop url must point to the first page of the topic in crawler view:

e.g. https://example.org/t/topic-title/1234
not https://example.org/t/topic-title/1234?page=2

See DiscussionForumPosting → Recommended properties → url

url: The canonical URL of the discussion. In multi-page threads, set this property to th first page URL. For a single discussion, this is usually the current URL.

rrit · December 17, 2023, 4:45pm

Which version of Discourse are you running?

Distinct marking of DiscussionForumPosting and Comment was implemented with Discourse v3.1.0 released August ’ 23.

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/8405ec2831322314b8145e7908f025ba6dee4881?diff=split&w=1

dfabulich · December 17, 2023, 7:21pm

I’m running the CDCK hosted version, always latest. The Discourse team can repro this by checking Google Search Console for meta.discourse.org.

mcwumbly · December 17, 2023, 10:55pm

I think @techAPJ is looking into a related request here:

Soenneker · January 1, 2024, 4:41am

Thanks all. I’m hoping this gets some attention at the start of the new year here. Very interested in optimizing everything as possible for Google SEO; let me know if I can help.

techAPJ · January 1, 2024, 8:27am

Let’s keep the discussion happening in this topic where we’re trying to figure out a solution for all the structured data related issues.

Topic		Replies	Views
Does Discourse support Google Structured Data (i.e. schema.org)? Feature	2	1934	March 2, 2017
Discussion Forum Schema improvements Product Support	34	4605	January 23, 2025
Google Structured Data -- Invalid Article Schema Product Support	39	9431	July 31, 2018
Different schema type for Topics and Posts Feature	16	4220	January 1, 2024
Applying Schema.org on the user profile page for improved author authority on Google Feature	11	2420	January 5, 2024

Google structured data for forums and profile pages

AI-generated summary

New in structured data: discussion forum and profile page markup

1. itemprop="text"

2. mainEntityOfPage

3. itemprop="url"

Related topics

1. `itemprop="text"`

2. `mainEntityOfPage`

3. `itemprop="url"`