By the end of April 6, 2020, Google will end its support for data-vocabulary.org, usually structured for data in rich results. Now, site owners will have to switch to schema.org markup in case they want to maintain their rich results eligibility. This change was announced in early January 2020.
Why is it important?
If by the deadline you have not converted to schema markup for structured data, your rich results will disappear from search results page by the end of April 6. That could mean a serious loss of traffic and organic visibility.
Google has been giving warnings to site owners since January about any pages that use data-vocabulary.org markup. Be sure to check your Google Search Console messages and see if you have received any notifications about it. If you have, please resolve the issues by the end of the day.
More on This Announcement
- The change will only pertain to rich results. Pages that use data-vocabulary.org markup for other purposes will remain valid and will not be affected.
- Any site owner can use the Rich Results Test Tool from google to test live code snippets
- The reason for focusing on schema markup is because of the increase in its popularity and usage, according to Google.
