Speaking to Robots - 5 Local SEO Schemas Including Gmail Reviews?

[Linda Buquet]

Image credit: The article below​

I just found a great post at Local SEO Checklist about local business schema. Love the robots!!!

But I found something that's new to me. Email review schema??? What?

How could I have never heard of this before? Does it work with Google Reviews? Has anyone tried it???

Until I read this, I didn't realize that certain things in my Gmail like the Amazon "View Order" button below were generated with schema.

Anyway, check out the review schema part and share your thoughts or if you are schema savvy, try it and let us know if it works.

<a href="http://localseochecklist.org/blog/speaking-robots-5-local-seo-schema-use/">Speaking to Robots - 5 Local SEO Schema To Use</a>

"This is exclusive to Google because it offers an interface in Gmail. There’s a high likelihood that you have seen Gmail schema – if you have ordered something on, say, Amazon, you would be able to see a link within your inbox without having to open the email. Clicking the “View Order” button should take you straight into your Amazon account orders page."

<a href="http://localseochecklist.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Screen-Shot-2015-01-27-at-6.28.25-pm.png"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-19 size-full" src="http://localseochecklist.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Screen-Shot-2015-01-27-at-6.28.25-pm.png" alt="Order Tracking Action Schema" height="54" width="639"></a>​

"The Review Action email schema is something similar (but better). It allows people to give feedback from their Gmail inbox without having to go to a third party site to do so. It opens a small window overlaying their inbox where they can give simple and quick feedback. This would be incredibly useful for a new or local business because it’s always difficult to get feedback, especially if the process isn’t very smooth or involves third party sites."

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/images/actions-review-action.png" alt="Review Action Schema - Google Developers" height="400" width="400">​

"The reason I left this for later, however, is that it takes a little know-how to do it right. First make sure you understand how to <a href="https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/getting-started">imbed schema into emails</a> and how to <a href="https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/testing-your-schema">test them</a>. Then look into how to do this particular review action schema <a href="https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference/review-action">here</a>."

So head over to Local SEO Checklist to read the rest!

So I'm really curious to know how and if this works with Google reviews. Maybe I'm reading it wrong and it's just a way to get reviews on your site?

I'll ping the local schema expert, David Deering and ask him to weigh in, SO CHECK BACK!


Now for a contrarian view of schema from Bill Hartzer.

<a href="https://www.billhartzer.com/pages/using-structured-data-your-website-could-lose-traffic/">Using Structured Data? Your Website Could Lose Traffic</a>

If you are using structured data on your website, or marking up your website’s code using schema.org code, it could ultimately cost you page views and visits from Google. By allowing marking using structured data on your website, you are allowing Google to use the data in any way they see fit–and Google is taking full advantage of that.

In a recent post, Mattias points out that Google is directly embedding Stack Overflow responses in the Google search results. Once the user has the answer, they don’t need to click and visit Stack Overflow’s website. As a result, they lose page views, visitors, and traffic.

When you think about it Bill is absolutely right. However, I don't think small local businesses need to worry about Google giving their content away as answers in the SERPs.

So there you have it. A few interesting things to consider about using schema.

What do you think???
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[LocalReviewGuy]

On the stacks overflow example, I don't think it is costing them traffic unless it is a VERY simple question. I usually just see enough that it looks like the right answer and then click through.

 

[Linda Buquet]

True, that's a good point David.

FYI all, discussion started on this at the Pro Community too.

 

[David Deering]

Hi Linda. My apologies for not responding yesterday. I just responded on Google+, but in a nutshell, what I said is that I don't believe it's possible for someone to respond to that review request inside of his or her Gmail and the review and rating then gets posted to a business' Google+ page. That would involve cross-scripting and I think for security reasons, Google+ wouldn't allow it, but I might test that theory out. I think that particular markup within a Gmail message is more so for obtaining reviews directly from customers.

Now, some people do believe that by marking up your content with structured data, you're basically making it easier for Google to use and display your content directly in the SERPs in their answer boxes as opposed to sending them to your site. Personally, I don't believe that many local businesses need to be too concerned about that. The sites that are being affected by that are the ones that are strictly informational and add no other value than simply sharing facts and information. But local business sites are much more than that, and I honestly haven't seen Google use a local business' website to generate the content for an answer box. Even if it did, Google still displays the URL for the site and most people will click to read more. And if Google does use a site's content for an answer box, it means that Google trusts that site a lot, which would be an awesome endorsement from Google. So either way, it's kind of a win-win situation in some respects. But like I said, I don't think local businesses really need to be too concerned about this.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks so much for weighing in David.

So he should not have implied that works for getting reviews in Gmail.
And Linda should have vetted the story facts before sharing.

But if I had to read in detail and vet every story, I could only share 1/3 of what I do and therefore you guys would miss a lot of the good stuff I do share.

But that all makes a lot of sense David. Thanks for sharing your expertise with us!

 

[David Deering]

Anytime, Linda. And like I said, I'm 99% sure that the reviews obtained within a Gmail message can't be posted to a Google+ page, but I'll double-check and let you know if they can. But I did verify that with a Google engineer who helped develop schema actions and he said that it can't be done.