On May 1st, 2018, Google updated their Structured Data Testing Tool, which resulted in the structured data for numerous recipe websites becoming invalid. This occurred because Google started recommending four new Schema.org properties for recipe schema data. To ensure better compatibility with Google Voice Assistant, it is advised that Recipe Schema Structured Data be updated.
Not using these properties may lead to a warning. Four properties that were previously optional are now recommended by Google.
Is the Recipe Structured Data Update Official?
Google has officially confirmed this change.
“We updated our recipe developer documentation to help users find your recipes and experience them with Google Search and the Google Assistant on Google Home. This will enable more potential traffic to your site. To ensure that users can access your recipe in more ways, we need more information about your recipe.
We also added more guidance for recipeInstructions. You can specify each step of the recipe with the HowToStep property, and sections of steps with the HowToSection property.
We now require the recipeIngredient and recipeInstructions properties if you want to support the Google Assistant on Google Home.”
This change was noticed by recipe site SEO expert Casey Markee, who tweeted about it on May 1, 2018.
What Changed with Recipe Structured Data
Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool is now alerting recipe sites that four previously inconsequential properties are now recommended. The properties that Google is recommending for recipe sites are:
recipeCategoryrecipeCuisinevideokeywords
Schema.org Recipe Structured Data offers 110 properties from which a recipe site can choose. Most of these properties are optional. Previously, these four schema properties were optional.
Now, Google’s structured data markup tool recommends using all four. Previously, it did not matter if these properties were used or not.
How Many Recipe Sites Does This Affect?
This update appears to affect all recipe sites that are not utilizing the four mentioned Schema.org properties. A warning is triggered for any recipe site that does not include the recipeCategory, recipeCuisine, video, and keywords properties.
What if a Page Does Not Publish a Video?
A recipe page without a video will still receive a warning suggesting the inclusion of a video property in the structured data. While a video is relevant for voice search, it seems unnecessary to recommend this property for a page lacking a video.
Recipe Blog SEO Expert Casey Markee stated:
“Any site that is running a recipe plugin and injecting recipe schema is now triggering these warnings. I just checked 7 recipe sites at random. All of them have the same missing schema errors.
With this change, Google is now “strongly suggesting” that sites incorporate these 4 new “suggested” markup fields:
– recipeCategory
– recipeCuisine
– video
– keywords
Google didn’t serve these as “warnings” before today.”
Will This Affect Rankings?
This is unlikely to impact rankings. However, many web publishers are eager to meet Google’s requirements. For recipe sites using WordPress Plugins to manage Schema.org structured data markup, the responsibility will probably shift to plugin providers to update their software.
However, a WordPress plugin publisher cannot update their plugin if Google has not published the necessary documentation for guidance.
Recipe site SEO, Casey Markee, noted:
“Hopefully, Google updates their recipe documentation soon so we can find out why they decided to incorporate these now.
Once they update the documentation, then you’ll see the major recipe plugins go ahead and add these fields to the plugin.”
Google Recommending the Keyword Property
The keyword meta tag was once abused in SEO, leading to its diminished importance as a ranking signal. Thus, it is surprising that Google is recommending the use of the keyword structured data property.
Casey Markee observed:
“The addition of a ‘keywords’ field… that is ripe for abuse. I’m not a fan of that at all.”
It will be interesting to see how this develops. Undoubtedly, thousands of recipe sites are eagerly awaiting documentation from Google.
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