Monday, February 10, 2014

Rich Snippet Spam

If you use rich snippets on your websites, you should be aware that Google is now penalizing websites for spamming structured data markup.
The new warning was first mentioned in a forum post on the Google Webmaster Central forums from a user who is asking for clarification about the warning and what the issue could be. It is a manual action penalty based on incorrect usage of markups, regardless of whether it was deliberate spam or simply a mistake.
The warning that would appear in a user’s accounts if they have manual action taken is:
Markup on some pages on this site appears to use techniques such as marking up content that is invisible to users, marking up irrelevant or misleading content, and/or other manipulative behavior that violates Google's Rich Snippet Quality guidelines.

The writing on the wall for penalties related to rich snippets was back in October at Pubcon when Google's Matt Cutts talked about changes Google was planning in regards to rich snippets and dealing with related snippet spam.

Source url : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2327459/Google-Starts-Penalizing-Sites-for-Rich-Snippet-Spam