Google recently updated the Rich Results error reports in Search Console. The company has added a new set of detailed errors to the rich results reports to make some errors on Search Console Rich Results status reports more actionable, and help webmasters understand how to solve those issues. If you want to understand which rich results Google could or could not read from your site, and troubleshoot those errors effectively, seek professional help from an organic SEO company that would be well aware of these new Google updates.
Google Search Console and the Rich Results Error Reports
Favored by many SEOs, webmasters, and website owners, Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool that helps in monitoring a website’s performance. It maintains, identifies and fixes any potential problems that prevent a website from appearing in Google’s search results as expected. The Search Console provides a rich result report for a website if:
- Google finds rich results of that type in your property, and
- The type is a supported rich result type such as Breadcrumb, Dataset, Event, FAQ, Fact check, Guided recipe, How-to, Image License, Job posting, Logo, Product, Q&A page, Recipe, Review snippet, Sitelinks search box, Special Announcement and Video.
These rich result reports are listed under Enhancements in the menu pane and there will be a separate report for each rich result type. However, if you have implemented a supported type and don’t see the report in your property, see missing rich results.
Google recently made an announcement on Twitter saying that they are adding more details to some errors on Search Console rich results status reports in an effort to assist SEOs with resolving rich results errors.
You will see a report only if Search Console has data for that rich result type on your website, and Search Console implements a report for that type. In other words, the rich result error report is designed to detect errors in your website’s structured data which may prevent pages from being served as rich results in search engine result pages.
The Rich Results status report consists of a:
- Summary page: It shows a chart of errors, warnings, and valid items on your website over time. The report will also display a table showing status and description category combinations that show how many structured data items currently fall in each category. To see details about items in a category, just click on a row in the summary page table.
- Details page: This page shows you errors, warnings and other details around supported rich results.
Google has added a new set of detailed errors to these reports to help you debug those issues with your rich results. Though rich results don’t necessarily help you rank better in Google, it can help you improve your click through rate from the search results. Therefore, getting more additional and detailed errors will help you better debug specific issues and thus perform better in Google Search.
What Specifically Are the Newly Added Detailed Errors?
Though Search Console is not reporting on new types of errors, it’s adding or enhancing information about errors it already checks for. Here is a list of the specific new detailed errors that are visible with this update:
- Invalid attribute string length
- Invalid attribute enum value
- Invalid object
- Type conversion failed
- Out of numeric range
This newly added detailed information should be what SEOs need to adjust a website’s implementation of structured data and get it recognized as valid. Only valid structured data is eligible to be served as a rich snippet in Google’s search results.
But then, it’s not guaranteed that valid structured data will get displayed by Google as rich result in SERPs. So, instead of spending time thinking why aren’t my pages being served as rich results, it is best to focus on improving the overall quality and relevance of your pages, as it could involve adding more content, or getting more links.
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