Support schema.org QAPage and Google rich results

If someone lands on the top post of a topic from a web search…

…they might not easily realize that the topic is solved. Replicating in the topic title the checkmark from the category list would help.

12 Likes

I think this is a solid idea. I’m wondering if there’s a non-sucky way of indicating in the Google search results that the topic includes an answer, too. Sticking [SOLVED] on the topic title isn’t great, IMO, but I must say I do notice it in search results and tend to prefer them because

this sucks

4 Likes

I doubt it. Not even with StackExchange do you see this type of thing. I’m pretty sure if it was possible, they’d be doing it. I’d love it if someone proved me wrong though, as this would indeed be a very handy feature. Google’s Rich Snippets seems like the place to start digging.

1 Like

Google probably honors the accepted answer for SO results.

I agree we can include the glyph in the title and header @sam on the page itself, we do that for lock, unlisted, etc don’t we?

Right, the closed lock glyph is present in the topic title - example.

Might get rather noisy if a topic is closed and solved, though. Maybe in that case just show closed.

It would be similar to the current Closed and Pinned

2 Likes

We should consider this as well to enhance Solved.

1 Like

https://github.com/discourse/discourse-solved/pull/69

Opened a pull request to solve this issue. Right now, it adds [✔] to the HTML title as shown on Google and in the browser tabs. It does not modify the top bar, or the topic list, since the goal here is SEO. Which should it add, though?

  • [✔]
  • [SOLVED]
  • something else

0 voters

Note that HTML title tags are restricted to text (which includes emoji). So we can’t use the same fontawesome glyph for this as on the page, though it’s pretty well approximated.

2 Likes

I think the correct approach here is:

  1. Introduce QAPage - schema.org which is the best anyway. If it fits nicely for solved.

  2. Any mucking with title should be optional default off

Stack Overflow do not do “title” munging, Quora do not do title munging, it makes little sense for us to add such a radically different default.

6 Likes

It’s been shipped.

@staff please removed #planned tag?

7 Likes

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.

Hey @notriddle, this doesn’t seem to be working right now. Your example, as well as a random solved topic from Meta is getting an error in Google’s test.

4 Likes

Checking the search console of my website and found this issue. i know i have to fix it by some way but how ?

Yesterday (Dec, 3) Google Webmaster’s announce that they developed a new rich result type for question and answer sites. Search results for eligible Q&A pages display a preview of the top answers. This new presentation helps site owners reach the right users for their content and helps users get the relevant information about their questions faster.

When I read “expert forums” I think on all discourse sites :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Frequently, the information they’re looking for is on sites where users ask and answer each other’s questions. Popular social news sites, expert forums, and help and support message boards are all examples of this pattern.

\ 640x572
A screenshot of an example search result for a page titled “Why do touchscreens sometimes register a touch when …” with a preview of the top answers from the page.

Well… maybe we can develop something for this:

<script type="application/ld+json">
  {
    "@context": "http://schema.org",
    "@type": "QAPage",
    "mainEntity": {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "How many ounces are there in a pound?",
      "text": "I have taken up a new interest in baking and keep running across directions in ounces and pounds. I have to translate between them and was wondering how many ounces are in a pound?",
      "answerCount": 3,
      "upvoteCount": 26,
      "dateCreated": "2016-07-23T21:11Z",
      "author": {
        "@type": "Person",
        "name": "New Baking User"
      },
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "1 pound (lb) is equal to 16 ounces (oz).",
        "dateCreated": "2016-11-02T21:11Z",
        "upvoteCount": 1337,
        "url": "https://example.com/question1#acceptedAnswer",
        "author": {
          "@type": "Person",
          "name": "SomeUser"
        }
      },
      "suggestedAnswer": [
        {
          "@type": "Answer",
          "text": "Are you looking for ounces or fluid ounces? If you are looking for fluid ounces there are 15.34 fluid ounces in a pound of water.",
          "dateCreated": "2016-11-02T21:11Z",
          "upvoteCount": 42,
          "url": "https://example.com/question1#suggestedAnswer1",
          "author": {
            "@type": "Person",
            "name": "AnotherUser"
          }
        }, {
          "@type": "Answer",
          "text": " I can't remember exactly, but I think 18 ounces in a lb. You might want to double check that.",
          "dateCreated": "2016-11-06T21:11Z",
          "upvoteCount": 0,
          "url": "https://example.com/question1#suggestedAnswer2",
          "author": {
            "@type": "Person",
            "name": "ConfusedUser"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
</script>

What do you think?

References
10 Likes

This was already implemented in the discourse-solved plugin (PR by @notriddle). If you view this topic as googlebot, you will find this in the head:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "http:\/\/schema.org",
  "@graph": [
    {
      "@type": "QAPage",
      "name": "Limit consecutive replies for topic owner?"
    },
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "Limit consecutive replies for topic owner?",
      "text": "Hi, \nI can see that the Limit Consecutive Replies is set to 3 and it does make sense in general but in our community, some users have started small personal \u201cBlogs\u201d in our Book o Remembrance.  the creator is generally speaking the only one posting.  These users are now  limited to 3 posts \nIs this  &hellip;",
      "upvoteCount": 2,
      "answerCount": 3,
      "dateCreated": "2018-12-03T22:44:18.304Z",
      "author": {
        "@type": "Person",
        "name": ""
      },
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Yes! Agreed, we ran into this situation early on and added a new rule that \n\nif you created the topic\nyou can reply as many times as you like to it\n\n<a class=\"mention\" href=\"\/u\/nbianca\">@nbianca<\/a> made this change today or yesterday it is already in, so pull latest to get it.",
        "upvoteCount": 9,
        "dateCreated": "2018-12-04T02:36:30.988Z",
        "url": "https:\/\/meta.discourse.org\/t\/limit-consecutive-replies-for-topic-owner\/103405\/2",
        "author": {
          "@type": "Person",
          "name": "codinghorror"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}
</script>

And in google’s results tester:

It looks like we have some errors in the implementation though… google’s testing tool reports issues, and the escaping of backslashes looks all wrong.

13 Likes

Thanks @jomaxro. Wow Sept 2015 ! I though that QAPage was new :smile:

1 Like

Not quite (check out edits to the OP). This subject of this topic has changed a bit since it was created back in 2015. The original request was to display a checkmark in the tile of the search result. The topic only pivoted to QAPage this September (2018).

2 Likes

We have some problems with mainEntity and I think this PR may help us.

@vinothkannans please can you check it out? :pray:

6 Likes