Are structured data still useful... for Google and elsewhere?

[riccarbi]

I am facing a question that has been puzzling me for some time. So I ask for your advice, guys.

So far, I have implemented structured data in a very basic way; namely, manually coding them and using the "article" type everywhere.
Now, I have realized that I can have different structured data types, depending on the page content, such as "article" for editorial content pages, "local business" for travel attraction reviews, "place" for pages aggregating various content by city, and so on. My most visited website is intentionally "multifarious" by content; therefore, it contains short museum reviews, full-length case-study articles, and breaking news pages about several subjects, including art, architecture, design, and technology.

Now, my question is: "Has anyone here got some good results and increased organic traffic by fine-tuning structured data, differentiating them by subject? Do you suggest me to do the same or working on structured data in order to rank better is just wasting time, now?

[mack]

I think in some cases it may increase click-through depending on the data you are using. I have used it in the past for pages that contain a review of an organisation. I provided the organisation details and a star rating. When I applied this, it immediately caused a noticeable CTR to those pages because the star rating was being displayed within the results. I suspect many other forms of structured data may not do so well.

mack.

[brighteryeg]

I don't see a lot of evidence that structured data is a direct ranking factor but focusing on schema opportunities that potentially translate into rich snippets can have a tangible impact. For example review schema, offer schema, event schema etc..

Note that Google recently made some changes that removed star ratings for a lot of web pages so I'd read up on that before deciding if/how you should deploy that tactic.

[Marty Rogers]

Yes - the best for increasing CTRs are FAQs and Reviews. Give those a try!

[topaz]

Yes. For top stories, etc ..schema type NewsArticle or just Article is a must with all the requirements.