Google structured data issues

Yes I received an email from google search console also complaining that I needed to fix videos I embedded with this plugin

I use Vimeo for my videos

Google is saying the following

Missing field “thumbnailUrl”
Missing field “name”
Missing field “description”
Missing field “uploadDate”

——-Message from Google —————–

Fix Videos markup for https://mysiteurl.com

Google systems show that your site is affected by one Videos markup issue. This means that your Videos pages might not appear as rich results in Google Search.

Search Console has created a new report just for this rich result type. The new report enables you to identify, fix, and resubmit affected pages to Google so they can start appearing in Search Results with rich result features.

——- End Message from Google —————–

IS there a fix on the horizon for this isse that Google is complaining about?

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by taffeld.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by taffeld.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by taffeld.

+1

It would be great if ARVE could grab this data automatically from the video provider (YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, etc) and include it in the HTML code to make the videos “SEO compliant”.

Same issue here since this morning.

Same here, basically out of nowhere. Hoping there’s a plugin-level fix for this soon!

It seems Google just started to send mails about it, the data was never put in there automatically (at least not completely) there so its nothing that suddenly changed in ARVE.

ARVE has shortcode parameters to fill in all of those. Automatically filling them is partially handled by the ARVE Pro addon. It automatically gets the thumbnailURL and name for providers that provide that through oembed. Some providers supply description but others don’t current versions if ARVE Pro do not include it at all (sorry). None of the providers give the upload date with oEmbed.

In version 5.0 of the Pro Addon that is on the works I will do some ‘smart’ things like if there is no description it will put in

[YouTube] video with title “[title]”

or just duplicate the title into the description.

What do you think of the idea to put in the post date from WordPress as upload_date? It would not be a correct date a video was uploaded but it would make Google shut up. Its probably better then nothing and would be solution that works for all providers. For self hosted videos I could pick the upload date from the video attachment but most users use YouTube and Vimeo I guess.

For YouTube and Vimeo I consider using their APIs for this in the future but it will probably require not only time but also that people sign up for API keys and enter them in the options.

But it is my goal to fill in those fields as best as possible with version 5.0 of the Pro Addon. For now everyone has to put in the missing information in by yourself.

[[arve url="..." thumbnail="this will be set as 'thumbnailUrl'" title="This will be used as 'name'" description="desc" upload_date="2019-10-04" /]]

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Nico.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Nico.

And what about Yoast, how do they solve it? https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/video-seo/ Your plugin is even one of the supported ones.

Thanks @keengamer I looked into what they are doing and they actually had the same idea as me and they use the post date as upload uploadDate.

For description they use parts of the post content as default, will do the same.

So I changed my mind and am currently working on a fix for ARVE Pro 4.3.0 to be release soon.

OK version 4.3.0 of the Pro Addon is out now.

I forgot to add to the change-log that I also added fallback default for title/name – the post title. So even for providers that have no data available all the required SEO data is now added.

I will add a option to 5.0 to disable the SEO data completely in case you use another plugin like Yoast SEO Video that already ads it but note its $80 a year and ARVE Pro has the basics covered on top of its main features for just 31,50€ a year (for now).

Next time please use nextgenthemes.com/support/ instead of this forums. I usually am not that fast in responding here. Also this covered the Pro Addon and I am actually not allowed to give support for that here. If you have any issues or questions about this ask them there.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Nico.

Thank you so much @nico23 for such quick response ??

@nico23 Will these fixes be retroactive if we upgrade to the Pro plugin? We went ahead and upgraded, but I’m wondering if I need to re-embed the videos for the new SEO info to be included?

@robbypayne If you want to roll with the default data ARVE adds you do not need to re-embed videos. There are fallbacks for all required entries to make Google happy, in case of thumbnailURL the Pro Addon has a option for a default thumbnail that is used when none is set and none can be automatically obtained. I think I will add another fallback for thumbnail to the posts thumbnail in 5.0. But for YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion and others it will be filled automatically.

So for example if you use the embed/youtube/vimeo/… blocks or a URL on its own line in classic editor or a ShortCode with nothing but the url like this [arve url="https://youtube..." /] then:

• name will be filled with YouTube title automatically.
• thumbnailURL will be filled you YouTube thumbnail automatically.
• description will be a excerpt from the post for YouTube and others. For Vimeo and others its filled with the correct description. New in 4.3.0.
• uploadDate will be filled the posts date not a date from YT (Pages and Custom Post types will also work). New in 4.3.0. We should all lobby YouTube and the major video hosts to put in inside the oEmbed result!
• There is more and even more coming with future version.

There is more like embedURL that for some reason in the test I am looking at right now is not there. But its not required, it actually should be added by the free plugin for everyone. But I need to really force myself to work on ARVE 9.0 and ARVE Pro 5.0 with Gutenberg block and stop patching the old versions or it will never be ready. There is more SEO data to come, duration and author is provided in many cases. I will keep building to have even more SEO data added.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Nico.

I can see one issue here. We use a theme which is not using excerpt, there is another field for it. So there should be a way to choose what field to use. I.e. Yoast has this option also for og tags etc.

It’s not using the_excerpt, its using 300 characters of the actual post_content. So you should be fine. This is how they are doing it, at least the part of the code I looked at.

There is also another fallback I build in that in case post_content is empty it will be filled with {title/name} - {provider} video

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Nico.

Thanks a lot for your quick reply, @nico23!

So, to summarize: if we update ARVE to the Pro version the issue will be solved without any additional work on our side, correct?

Or do we need to do any extra steps like enabling a specific setting or something like that after installing ARVE Pro?

Usually yes but it depends on what video provider(s) you are using.

For YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Wistia and a bunch of other hosts the thumbnail will be automatically obtained.

Like I said above there is a setting called Fallback Thumbnail in the Pro Addon. If you set that you are save for all cases. Then when the thumbnail for a video can not be obtained that image will be used. Ideally in cases like that you set your own on individual videos. You will see if there is one in Lazyload or Lightbox mode or the Google Structured data tool for all modes. You may also want to set Default Mode to Lazyload or Lightbox when you are at the settings page but that has no effect on the structured data.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Nico.