Potential SEO issues post 18.12

[Fellsteruk]

Hey Everyone, 

Not sure if everyone has had 18.12 land on their community yet however it boasts some SEO enhancements however since 18.12 I'm constantly getting alerts from google search console about errors with my SEO specifically around the Q&A structured data scheme. 

Errors:

• Missing field "mainEntity.answerCount"
• Missing field "mainEntity.name"

Warnings:

• Missing field "mainEntity.suggestedAnswer.url"
• Missing field "mainEntity.author"
• Missing field "mainEntity.text"
• Missing field "mainEntity.dateCreated"
• Missing field "mainEntity.suggestedAnswer.dateCreated"

This has been raised with support and currently, on a bug backlog, I'm just curious if anyone else has observed this since 18.12 was pushed to live. 

Thanks 

[Fellsteruk]

@ChetnaS  just to confirm on the back of your other comment in 18.12 release notes, this will be fixed in 19.1? 

[ChetnaS]

Errors:

• Missing field "mainEntity.answerCount"

>> This is checked-in and should make it to 19.1 unless there is some exception.

• Missing field "mainEntity.name"

>> Can you paste me which page is seeing this error? I tried a Talktalk forum page and there is no error on entity name. Tried with this page

[Fellsteruk]

Thanks, I think i'll have to wait for the next alert, i just logged into my search console and whilst there is an entry for that alert there is no URL recorded which is very odd as i have a url for the answer count. 

I'll keep checking the console to see if it captures the trouble url, sadly the email alerts dont show the problem page just the domain name. 

[ChetnaS]

Cool let us know : )

[AlanA]

Thanks for sharing, we'll keep an eye on this one. 

[Wendy_S]

@Fellsteruk We got the same alert and logged a ticket with Lithium. Indeed a bug and will be fixed in the next release so we just have to wait for it.

Another bug was the text editor in IE Explorer browser (Yes, some of our experts still use that IE version). @mention is not working as well as some text editing capabilities like underline etc,

Also fixed in the next release.

I commented on the release note blog with these issues.

Cheers

Wendy

[Fellsteruk]

Thanks, yeah we just noticed the IE issue... 19.1 isn't too far away thankfully 😉 

[dfisher1342]

I just got an email from Google Search Console that says:

Top Warnings (5 maximum)

Warnings are suggestions for improvement. Some warnings can enhance your appearance on Search; some warnings can become errors in the future. The following warnings were found on your site:

• Missing field "mainEntity.suggestedAnswer.url"
• Missing field "mainEntity.suggestedAnswer.author"
• Missing field "mainEntity.dateCreated"
• Missing field "mainEntity.suggestedAnswer.dateCreated"
• Missing field "mainEntity.author"

Is the proposed fix coming soon going to include all these schema designations for better performance in SEO? Or will it just remove some classification to clear the errors?

[Fellsteruk]

What version are you on http😕/<your community here>/status/version as of 19.1 this should have been fixed i believe mine stopped happening as of 19.1 but i also got one of these alerts yesterday so I've flagged it with support again, id suggest you do the same. 

Either 19.1 didn't fix the issue or google have made changes

[tyw]

Thanks for this thread @Fellsteruk .

We are on 19.1 and I'm getting errors and warnings still so I've reached out to support.  

Out of curiosity has anyone seen Q&A results in Google search results yet? I've been trying to find an example from a Lithium/Khoros community but I see the normal search results only. I know it takes some time but if anyone has any examples I'd love to see it 🙂 

[SheenaK]

Hi folks, we're on version 19.8 and seeing the same errors in the search console. Has anyone had any progress with fixing this?

Thanks!

[tyw]

I've had support turn off the feature due to the errors 

Just curious, has anyone gotten this to work, or seen it working in a Khoros community?

I am really confused at this point too - is this a bug on the Khoros side, or do community managers/developers need to do something? 

[SheenaK]

I got around the errors by creating overrides, such as this one for example:

message-view.widget.author-username@override

<div itemprop="author">
    <@delegate />
</div>

But that's very hacky and cumbersome, so an out of the box fix would be ideal.