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Google Webmaster markup errors

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Hello, I have found many errors in google webmaster structured data:

post-136690-0-38025000-1388825912_thumb.

This is the datails of a markup error related to one post:

post-136690-0-10672500-1388825957_thumb.

P.S.

I use a custom theme so I don't know if this happened also on the default one.

Try it on the default skin - if it still happens, submit a support request and we'll take a look. If it doesn't, contact your skin author :)

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I think it's easier if someone with the default skin make a test,

I can not change skins on my live board and after that google webmaster will update stats every 1000 years ... :)

Try it on the default skin - if it still happens, submit a support request and we'll take a look. If it doesn't, contact your skin author :smile:

I'm using the default skin and getting the exact same errors. My Google Webmasters Account looks almost exactly like that screenshot except the numbers are different.

Screenshot from mine.

post-35845-0-34258600-1388844096_thumb.p

Same here also:

834f048fae3177fed100e6a3affd8ef4.png' al" alt="834f048fae3177fed100e6a3affd8ef4.png">

Same with mine. Happens on default skin on my 2 forums also.

Try it on the default skin - if it still happens, submit a support request and we'll take a look. If it doesn't, contact your skin author :smile:

I did open a ticket.... anyone else have an update?

Probably not all that difficult to alter templates to comply, but I can't see IPS updating anything prior to V4.

I have manually added bits for twitter cards, facebook etc., so this should be similar.

Probably not all that difficult to alter templates to comply, but I can't see IPS updating anything prior to V4.

I have manually added bits for twitter cards, facebook etc., so this should be similar.

Is 3.4.6 unsupported software already? This is a bug and it needs to be fixed.

Not sure it is a bug as such.

Surely it is a third party site not recognising certain markups in the community.

Might be wrong though.....

Ian, I'm sure you know that in this business, if Google says it is an error, then it is an error whether we agree with Google or not. We live and die by what google thinks of us. In this case, Google is looking for certain microformat tags that are missing, apparently site-wide.

Many IPS customers will not be able to upgrade to 4.0 right away due to third party skins, hooks, and applications and the release date for 4.0 has already slipped from "late 2013" to "first quarter 2014" to just "2014"... which could be 11 months from now for all we know. Add in another 4 - 6 months waiting for skins and hooks to be updated and that could mean May 2015 before 4.0.x is rolled out to many large sites.

Imagine if Microsoft stopped releasing Windows updates eight months before the release of their next operating system version!

I am not disagreeing, but what I am saying is that it might be easier and quicker to make the changes yourself to the templates. I would guess that any changes would be template based.

I think they have already said that they are not planning another release in 3.4.x.

Of course that might alter.

Okay... I don't need a full release, but I would need to know what parts of the template to alter to make the fix. Do you think I should add it to the bug tracker?

This is a critical issue which needs to be addressed by IPB team asap.

I have a ticket in, if I get an answer before it is posted here, I will share with the group.

Without having investigated closely, this is not a "critical" issue. This wouldn't be a new issue either...your site has run just fine without having checked webmaster tools until now right? :smile:

It would appear looking at the screenshots that for two of the microformats supported, Google is indicating there is an error. This would be purely a template change once the issue is found. It is not something we would rush out a patch for. If we release another 3.4.x release, it would be possible to include the fix with that release, yes, however we would not treat this as a "critical issue" that a patch must be released for.

It should be noted for clarity - you do not have to support any microformats in your HTML output, it is not a requirement of generating a web page (it is good practice to do so, however, which is why IP.Board does support several microformats).

Because this would be considered a bug, and I have not noticed a bug report for it, I've logged one here: http://community.invisionpower.com/resources/bugs.html/_/ip-board/microformat-errors-r43485

Please feel free to report issues and bugs to our bug tracker in the future so that they will be addressed in the most appropriate manner. Thanks!

//// With that having been said I would still prefer to not have the errors in Webmasters tools, so if we can find the templates need to be edited and post them here that would be great. Also any pointers from the IPB Team would be appreciated.

Without having investigated closely, this is not a "critical" issue. This wouldn't be a new issue either...your site has run just fine without having checked webmaster tools until now right? :smile:

It should be noted for clarity - you do not have to support any microformats in your HTML output, it is not a requirement of generating a web page (it is good practice to do so, however, which is why IP.Board does support several microformats).

It is simply an issue of Google's search algorithms changing faster than our IPS templates do. I expect that will always be the case, but IPS should catch up to Google for crawl issues like this lest it hurt IPS' customer's SERPS. Google appears to be placing a substantially stronger emphasis on "rel=author", "rel=me", and "rel=publisher" tags recently.... I implemented all 3 of the "rel=" tags last week and there is already a distinct uptick in Googlebot activity and pages indexed (in my case, pages indexed was crashing down and has finally reversed direction just in the past week).

In this case, Google is saying that the hentry tag is missing :

Missing: author (4 times)
Missing: entry-title (4 times)
Missing: updated (4 times)

.... and Google believes these things to be important.

As leaving my board IPS Stock appears to have been crashing my search engine results after one of the notorious Google updates, I am not inclined to believe that these errors "are not critical because it's been like that for a while". Google changed, IPS did not.

If Google says it's an issue, then it's an issue whether you agree with them or not, bfarber.

Edit: All I really want to know is what I need to change in the template... you don't need a full release to do that.

It is simply an issue of Google's search algorithms changing faster than our IPS templates do. I expect that will always be the case, but IPS should catch up to Google for crawl issues like this lest it hurt IPS' customer's SERPS. Google appears to be placing a substantially stronger emphasis on "rel=author", "rel=me", and "rel=publisher" tags recently.... I implemented all 3 of the "rel=" tags last week and there is already a distinct uptick in Googlebot activity and pages indexed (in my case, pages indexed was crashing down and has finally reversed direction just in the past week).

In this case, Google is saying that the hentry tag is missing :

Missing: author (4 times)
Missing: entry-title (4 times)
Missing: updated (4 times)

.... and Google believes these things to be important.

As leaving my board IPS Stock appears to have been crashing my search engine results after one of the notorious Google updates, I am not inclined to believe that these errors "are not critical because it's been like that for a while". Google changed, IPS did not.

If Google says it's an issue, then it's an issue whether you agree with them or not, bfarber.

Edit: All I really want to know is what I need to change in the template... you don't need a full release to do that.

Did you write up a ' How to' for that? I see you said you were going too.

Did you write up a ' How to' for that? I see you said you were going too.

I haven't yet, I will try to get it written up over the next day or two.

I'm having this issue as well. Thanks for the how to :)

Just to be clear because I know any reply I make anywhere ever can be taken out of context...I did not say it's not an issue at all. I said this is not a "critical" issue that requires an immediate patch release to address.

If PHP makes a release and all IP.Board installations when visited throw a fatal error instead of rendering the page, that is a critical issue. If suddenly it's discovered that posting a topic throws a database error for 50% of our client base, that is a critical issue. In these cases, core basic functionality does not work, and that is unacceptable. When classifying whether an immediate patch is needed, it is important to make this distinction.

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