Structured Data Analysis.

Structured data

As mentioned before, structured data gives search engines explicit clues about the meaning of pages and their components, and can enable special features in Google’s results.

Implementing the various types of structured data can help you get more prominent, more detailed rich snippets, which can bring more traffic and, as a result, more conversions.

In this guide you’ll use Screaming Frog to check and validate structured data against the Schema.org specifications and Google’s requirements.

• 1. Enable the structured data options under “Configuration > Spider > Extraction”.

First, enable ‘JSON-LD’, ‘Microdata’, ‘RDFa’, ‘Schema.org Validation’ and ‘Google Rich Result Feature Validation’ in the Spider configuration.

123

1ExtractionThe Spider › Extraction section.2Structured DataThe formats to extract: JSON-LD, Microdata, RDFa.3ValidationSchema.org and Google Rich Result Feature Validation.

The “Case-Sensitive” option is still optional for Google’s understanding of structured data, but required for Schema.org.

• 2. Run the crawl

Once the structured data options are enabled, just start the crawl: SEO Spider will begin extracting the data from the pages and validating it.

• 3. Analyse the data in the “Structured Data” tab

The “Structured Data” tab has filters that help you see whether your structured data implementation has validation issues. The ‘Total Types’ and ‘Unique Types’ columns count the number of item types found for each URL.

12

1Structured DataThe tab dedicated to structured data.2FiltersContains Structured Data, Missing, Validation Errors and the others.

Besides the top window, you can check the sidebar, which summarises the data in each tab and filter so you know where to click without opening every filter.

12

1Structured DataThe tab in the main window.2Sidebar filtersThe number of URLs in each filter.

Structured data filters

Here are the filters and what they do:

• Contains Structured Data: every URL containing structured data.

• Missing Structured Data: URLs without structured data.

• Validation Errors: every URL with validation errors against the Schema.org vocabulary, Google rich results or both, depending on your configuration. SEO Spider always classifies Schema.org issues as errors rather than warnings. Google rich result feature validation shows errors for missing required properties or problems with how they’re implemented.

• Validation Warnings: every URL with validation warnings against Google Rich Results. SEO Spider fills this filter only with validation issues for recommended (optional) properties.

• Parse Errors: every URL containing structured data that couldn’t be parsed correctly. This is often due to incorrect markup. If you use Google’s preferred format, JSON-LD, the JSON-LD Playground is an excellent tool for debugging parse errors.

• Microdata URLs: URLs containing structured data in Microdata format.

• Microdata URLs | JSON-LD URLs | RDFa URLs: URLs containing structured data in JSON-LD, RDFa or Microdata format respectively.

• 4. View the “Structured Data Details” tab

Once the data is collected you can see all the details in SEO Spider’s bottom window: on the left, the property values with icons flagging errors or warnings; on the right, the details of each validation issue, its severity and the Schema.org links to find the specifications and fix the problem.

123

1PropertiesThe page’s structured data tree.2IssueValidation errors and warnings.3Structured Data DetailsThe bottom window tab.

Google Product validation error example

In the example below, lv.com has validation errors and warnings against the ‘Google Product’ structured data requirements. On the right you can see 1 error among the required properties and several warnings among the recommended ones.

123

1ProductThe item with the validation error.2Error and WarningThe severity of each issue.3Structured Data DetailsThe bottom window tab.

Recommended properties, flagged as warnings, can be implemented to add more information about the content (which can give a better user experience) or simply ignored.

In the next example, HSBC has an error in its breadcrumb structured data.

The issue says the ‘http://schema.org/item’ property is required for ‘ListItem’.

123

1itemListElementThe ListItem without the item property.2ErrorThe item property is required for ListItem.3Structured Data DetailsThe bottom window tab.

Google’s breadcrumb guidelines say the properties should include item (the web page URL), name (the breadcrumb title) and position (of the breadcrumb in the trail). HSBC is simply missing the item property and its URL.

These are just a few examples of how to read the data SEO Spider collects. I recommend reviewing the official documentation regularly, as it’s constantly updated.

• 5. Exporting validation errors and warnings

Screaming Frog has two reports dedicated to structured data.

123

1ReportsThe reports menu.2Structured DataThe structured data reports.3Validation Errors & Warnings SummaryThe aggregated summary of the issues.

The ‘Validation Errors & Warnings Summary’ report is especially useful because it groups issues into patterns (rather than listing every instance) and shows the number of URLs affected by each pattern with an example URL (similar to how Search Console reports Web Vitals). You can see an example below.

123

1Issue SeverityError or Warning.2URLs affectedHow many pages have the issue.3Issue MessageThe missing or wrong property.

The “Validation Errors & Warnings” report is a true bulk export of every error and warning found, with the URL it’s on. Very complete, but hard to read on large sites.

Related tabs: Structured Data | Reports

Structured data video

Video tutorialScreaming Frog tutorial: structured data analysisWatch the video5:31