How valuable is structured data?

[goodroi]

I have read many people that became disillusioned over structured data. Maybe its value was overstated by some, because it is definitely not a SEO ranking miracle. However there is definite value from my experiences. I don't see so much of a ranking boost but I do see a traffic boost many times when I use structured data. My hypothesis is that structured data makes your result looks better so it boosts CTR.

What are your thoughts? Share your insights on the good & bad of structured data.

[EditorialGuy]

I think structured data can be useful in a number of situations. For example: When you're a business or organization with a physical presence, and you're less interested in Web traffic than in communicating information to customers and prospective visitors.

For example, if you're running a veterinary clinic, most people looking up the name of your clinic probably want to know your phone number, address, and hours of operation. If structured data makes it easier for a search engine to display that information on a SERP, that's a win for you (and for the search engine).

To put it another way, "search engine optimization" isn't always about rankings and Web referrals.

[tangor]

Properly done, structured data improves serp displays (not ranking!) and that can produce a traffic advantage (if seen in serp, leads user interest).

I just do it because it makes sense semantically.

[Jez123]

I think it's important as it adds trust and aids clicks and conversions. Sadly I just received a manual penalty for spammy structured data this week :(

Google has detected structured markup on some of your pages that violates our structured data quality guidelines.

I am hoping that I can regain them. I honestly had no idea that it was considered spammy. And like all google info and guidelines, it's very ambiguous.

[Cocoweb]

Is it an authority factor before google displays them? We've had them for years, but I can't count the times I've seen our serps with them. Structured test tool shows everything is correct.

[WhiteHatTryHard]

It's currently getting spammed with fake 5 star reviews... idk when the last time was I saw a reviews structured data widget that wasn't 5 stars. - Its getting ridiculous to the point where you have to trust the 3.5 star site over the 5 star one, because they are not posting fake reviews.

Anyways. It does seem to work and will increase CTR for sure.

So please spam the crap out of it so Google finally fixes this fake 5 star review BS.

[robzilla]

Oops, I was about to complain I've never seen any fruits of my structured data labor, but having checked a few queries just now, apparently I've recently been blessed with rich snippets!

No discernible difference in CTR according to Search Console.

[Jez123]

It's currently getting spammed with fake 5 star reviews...

It is annoying. I DO have mostly 5 star reviews, all genuine and to think that other fakers are spoiling that is irritating. I think google are cracking down on it a bit now though. I got my stars back after a successful reconsideration request. Apparently we had not aggregated the reviews enough on the main page and it looked like we had cherry picked the reviews. We hadn't, they were all 5 stars :-)

[Nutterum]

Rich snippets work very well. At the very least they can enable you to occupy more real estate on the SERP page, especially if you in the top 3, pushing your competitors below the fold (yes, I am one of those old hats that still believes and empirically proves that above and below the fold is real and can impact the number of clicks on the SERPS). Also, I have yet to see SERPs with star reviews that get less traffic than SERPs without those.

In addition, small things like dynamic data being pushed to the rich snippet can greatly increase the perception of relevancy of your result and can lead to more qualified visits (sometimes at the expense of volume). For example, if you display the live values of a forex exchange pair in your rich snippet, or current price of a bus ticket, can lead to many people glancing through and marking your website as a source without entering your website. You think this is bad, but purchasing decisions in 2017 are rarely one-click-finish. Yes, you loose "spot" traffic but gain educated visitors down the line that have the mission of not looking at your website for prices, rather looking at your website to buy, which is what we are all after in the end.

[WhiteHatTryHard]

Google is really pushing it.

I'm probably missing out on 30% more traffic by not using fake reviews markup.

They make it so easy... and it has been working for over a year too. They make me feel stupid for not wanting to break their Guidelines. Like literally I feel stupid for not putting up 100 fake 5 star reviews per page. Good Job Google.

[Rhys1234567890]

I've used quite a bit of markup on our pages and never noticed any difference. Used it for social tags, used it for courses, but had no joy with it whatsoever, and after Jez's website got penalised for using it incorrectly (according to Google's guidelines), I've now removed it. It all worked, and been through the structured tester, but for some reason, it never made any difference to our display in SERP.