Numerous violations of Google and Schema.org guidelines

I have a fair amount of experience with Schema, and manually mark up every site I work on since I’ve yet to find a plugin that does a good job.

Unfortunately, I do not recommend using this plugin either.

In short:

The markup for your business appears on every website in full. That is not necessary and could be considered as spammy use of schema, something Google started to address several months ago. You should absolutely markup every page if appropriate, but including the same markup on every single page – and items like hours and payment options – is not recommended.

Furthermore, if you read the guidelines at https://schema.org/docs/gs.html#schemaorg_expected it’s clear that marking up hidden text should be avoided if possible. Some hidden text that is marked up would be acceptable depending upon what it was. But the plugin is hiding all of the text that is marked up. That is not good.

Lastly, the reviews functionality generates fake reviews and injects them into the markup (again, hidden) on every page/post (one review each). Not only would that be in violation of Google guidelines, but at least in the US it would be illegal. So even offering this functionality is just mind boggling to me.

I don’t think I’ve ever taken the time to write a review for a plugin. But this was so egregious I felt I had an obligation to do so.