Invalid Article Schema
@tolkin reported to me that Google is still showing posts as invalid:
The image requirement is bizarre. It needs to be an image of the item (the post in this case), not an image contained in the post (which usually won’t exist) or from some metadata about the post. Google’s tool should be showing that as a warning if at all. I’ll add the headline attribute.
I cannot be sure, but it appears the only change that was made to the code was to change the schema type from Article to DiscussionForumPosting, which doesn’t solve the problem.
The change did not include the Google required attributes:
- author: missing and required
- This could be the poster name
- datePublished: missing and required
- This could be the posted date
- headline: missing and required
- This should the topic subject
- image: missing and required
- This sould be the poster’s avatar image
- name: missing and required
- I have no idea what this is… perhaps the poster’s name again?
- publisher: missing and required
- I believe this is the site name
My screenshot is from Google’s tool. I added the heading today, but the image attr doesn’t make sense.
For what it’s worth, there are SEO advantages to getting this feature in place, based on this article:
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/get-started-using-schema/
Considering much of a forum’s success depends on organic traffic, this could be a real benefit to the software.
Yes. I just changed the schema type for now.
Different schema type for Topics and Posts
Hi Discourse team,
First of all, I am new here, so I hope I am doing well posting here for a bug.
I tried to find an existing topic before to post a new one but I did not find anything, so I am sorry in advance if such topic already exists. Do not hesitate to link it or do whatever is necessary. Thank you.
So here is the issue I would like to report. As mentionned in the title, microdata on discourse do not fulfil with Google tool’s expectations.
On topic lists, Google tools reports more than 60 errors :
example of the main topic list
for more details, see this test
There is also errors on posts :
for more details, see this other test
My company is using discourse as forum for 3 of our websites. We greatly consider the SEO aspect and would be thankful for you to correct all possible errors in microdata.
So is it possible for you to fix microdata ?
Hi Discourse team,
I posted my question about two weeks ago. I assume fixing microdata will take a certain amount of time but since I got no answer yet I allow myself to ask you if the fix is on track and when it could be released ?
Thank you in advance for your work and your reply.
Are all 61 errors saying the same thing? <div itemprop='itemListElement' itemscope itemtype='http://schema.org/ListItem'> needs to have a “position” attribute?
The 61 errors count 3 different kind of error :
- ItemList -> itemListElement -> url and/or ItemList -> itemListElement -> item -> url (30 times): All values provided for url must point to the same page.
- ItemList -> itemListElement -> position (30 times): A value for the position field is required.
- global to ItemList (1 time): ListItem with url and ListItem with item are incompatible.
As I mentioned it in my first post, you can follow the links I gave to see all details.
I just pushed a commit to improve this:
I will keep digging but I think the remaining errors are due to google validation tool:
https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/?hl=en#url=meta.discourse.org
I still have this page to improve, will do it tomorrow:
Particularly this page has a warning with “DiscussionForumPosting” which is asking us to provide an image if possible. I think we could just add `itemprop=“image” when we cook the post to images. I will investigate this.
Hi @joffreyjaffeux ,
You fixed the issues regarding the “position” attribute.
But it still remains to resolve the uncompatibility between ListItem with “url” and ListItem with “item” Also, url attribute of each ListItem should point to the same page.
There is progress but still some work to do.
Yes I’m continuing work on this today or tomorrow. Thanks for recap/update.
I will investigate more, but I do think there’s a bug in google tool here. Can you share me a test where it’s showing this for you please?