Google Penalty due no good rich snippets markup?

[Patipada]

Hi,
A clients site has a manual penalty due wrong rich snippters markup.
The Google rankings dropped big time. So it’s kind of urgent.
The rich snippet tools forom Google gives the following errors:

https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/?url=http://kaldi.nl/afkortingen-thee/

Is there anything I can do myself, or is this only possible in the theme itself?
Maybe with a plugin?

[Patipada]

Really looking forward for a solution here, because the Google penalty really hurts 🙁
I have more specific information:

– It is for all websites using the Swiftideas Joyn and Atelier theme. Probably all Swift themes.
F.e. This is Atelier:
https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool?url=https%253A%252F%252Fpatipada.nl%252Fyogakleding-kopen-waar-let-je-op%252F
This is Joyn:
https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/?url=http://kaldi.nl/afkortingen-thee/

– It is only for the blog pages of the theme. The page pages seem to be fine.

– What is missing: author, image, name, publisher
Also these are preferable: dateModified, mainEntityOfPage

– Here is more information on how bad rich snippets can cause a Google penalty: http://searchengineland.com/spammy-structured-markup-penalty-recovery-use-schema-markup-caution-223289

Possible Solutions?
– Is it possible to add the misssing values to each blog article?
– Maybe the best quickfix for now is remove the snippets in the blog pages? Can you help me do this?

Really looking for a reply here…

Thanks!
Gerjan

[David Martin – Support]

Hi,

Thanks for reporting this.

I am double checking this with the developer with the idea we can get this added in in the next update.

—

I’d be very surprised if Google added a manual penalty for those particular missing structured data items though, not that I am an SEO expert.

From reading the article it appears if Google thinks the SD is spammy or if they cannot detect they simply remove the SD from appearing in their index.

Thanks,
David.

[David Martin – Support]

…. confirmed this will be in the next updated for Joyn & Atelier.

Thanks.

[Patipada]

Ok, great. Thanks.
Do you have a suggestion for me to remove the rich snippets for the time being?

[David Martin – Support]

From the blog article? You would need to search and remove the placements within the file: joyn/swift-framework/content/sf-blog.php.

It would likely be easier to wait on the update.

Thanks.

[Patipada]

Ok, great. Good news by the way.
The Google penalty only causes no rich snippets will be shown in the SERP’s.
There is no penalty for the rankings.
The reason the organic traffic dropped drastically was a wrong implementation of the Google Analytics code.
But even though it is great the problem will be solved, because the Rich Snippets causing higher CTR and higher CTR creates higher rankings 😉

[David Martin – Support]

Great news all round. Stay tuned for the pending update.

Thanks.