Google announced that they are sun-setting data-vocabulary.org structured markup starting on April, 2020. This implies that site owners will now have to switch to schema.org markup to be eligible to receive rich results.
Announcement: “As of April 6, 2020, data-vocabulary.org markup will no longer be eligible for Google rich result features.”
Google further announced that they will be sending notices to publishers who still use the old system.
Here’s How You Would Change The Data Vocabulary To Schema.org:
Data vocabulary.org
Schema.org
Please Note: If you are still using data-vocabulary.org structured data- start moving to Schema.org structured data before it’s too late.
Why We Care: If your pages are still marked up via data-vocabulary.org schema come April 6th, rich result features for your pages will no longer come into view, which means less organic visibility and as a consequence, this will give rise to potentially decreased traffic.
Paying Heed To More Information Related To The Announcement:
“From January 20 until April 6, any data-vocabulary.org structured data on a web page will trigger a warning for the appropriate rich result type. After April 6, an error will be triggered,” Google wrote on its data anomalies page. Warning and error messages will appear within Google Search Console.
Google cited the increasing usage and over-growing popularity of schema.org for the shift in developmental focus.
Site owners can test out live code snippets via Google’s Rich Results Test tool.
Pages using data-vocabulary.org schema for purposes excluding rich results will still remain valid.
What We Learned:
Keep your structured data up to date with whatever Google considers as their preferred version. JSON-LD structured data is Google’s preferred version.
One can put it off until it’s too late but at that point a publisher is under a zero hour time frame.
It’s the right time to prioritize changing structured data to schema.org. If it’s within your resources updating to JSON-LD Schema.org structured data format is the preferred option because it is widely used and accepted.
