Structured Data Markup or Schema Markup can be a wonderful method to improve your organic search visibility, indexation and content discovery. Some structured data markups channel into Google’s Knowledge Graph, become visible in local results and produce Rich Snippets, all factors simultaneously help improve organic search visibility and click through rate.

Despite being of so much importance, structured data can potentially hurt your website. It may happen if you do not make correct use of them. As you know Google keeps updating its policies and algorithms, one of the changes to Rich Snippet policies can get you “spammy structured markup” penalties from the search engine giant. In fact, innumerable websites are hit with this structure data markup spam, simply because of not taking the guidelines seriously. SEO agencies take a safe turn by remaining careful with their practices in order to avoid being penalized.

Spammy Structured Markup

Your encounter with this message on the Manual Actions page clearly indicates that Google has discovered violation of its structured data guidelines. Means, some of the markups on your webpage might be using techniques that nowhere in Google’s guidelines for structured data. As per the guideline, only specific items should have the snippets. But, marking up content hidden from users, or marking up misleading or irrelevant content as well as any other manipulative activities can cause the spam message to flash.  

In response to the spammy practices, Google has put into effect a manual action for the spammed parts of the website, which can also affect the way your site displays in search engine results. This penalty can be site-wide or manual. Actions affecting how your whole site is displayed are tabulated under Site-wide matches; whereas actions affecting only a part of your site are mentioned under partial matches.

How to avoid penalty?

As the spam penalty is due to sheer violation of Google’s Rich Snippet Quality guidelines, you can avoid it by adhering to a few simple rules:

1. Follow Google’s most recent guidelines while structured data implementation. Review guidelines and policies carefully, before you begin.
2. Be on the safer side and test markups in the Structured Data Testing Tool. This is a simple method of validating your schema markup. The testing will let you look for errors and fix them accordingly, thus avoiding penalty.
3. You can also monitor the Structured Data Report in Google Search Console account (Webmaster Tool) to check indexation and errors.

In case, spamming error has occurred, SEO agencies need to take a few actions:

1. Update existing markup and remove any that violates the guidelines.
2. Once the changes are made, submit a reconsideration request with Google to remove the penalty.

If Google determines after evaluation that there is no violation of structured data guidelines, manual action will be revoked. So hire a professional SEO Experts for your online business promotion to world wide at the great price.