Fix Rich Snippets Testing Tool Warnings on Blogger

When I was implementing Google authorship for my blog I noticed some “Warning” messages in the rich snippets testing tool. After researching and debugging for a couple of hours what each field meant I found a solution to completely remove all errors from my blog.

In this post I’ve demonstrated how you can remove and fix these three type of warning messages while testing your BlogSpot blog on Webmasters rich snippets testing tool:

1. Warning: Missing required field “entry-title”.
2. Warning: At least one field must be set for Hcard.
3. Warning: Missing required field "updated".

Note: These warning messages do not have any effect on your blog’s rankings.

What do these Warning Messages mean?

These warning messages appear when your blog has any of the Microformats missing.

What are Microformats?

Read the answer on Google Support about Microformats.

“Microformats are simple conventions (known as entities) used on web pages to describe a specific type of information —for example, a review, an event, a product, a business, or a person. Each entity has its own properties. For example, a Person has the properties name, address, job title, company, and email address.”

What does each Warning Message Mean?

1. Warning: Missing required field “entry-title”
   
   The entry-title element is used to identify/represent the Entry Title meaning Post Title of your post. If this Microformat is missing from your blog you get a warning message.
   
   
2. Warning: At least one field must be set for Hcard
   
   The hCard element is used to represent people or an organization. The rich snippet testing tools throws an error if this field is missing from your blog.
   
   Note: The hCard field has many sub-properties in parentheses like “name” and “author”, if you’re receiving such warning messages kindly leave a comment below.
   
   
3. Warning: Missing required field "updated"
   
   The updated field notifies search engines when a particular post/page was last updated. If this field is missing from your blogs post you get a warning message.

 

Fix for Warning Messages

Take a backup of your template before you make any of the changes mentioned below.

 

Fix for Warning: Missing required field “entry-title”.

-Open your blog’s template and search for the post-title or similar looking code line in your template:

<h3 class='post-title.........' </h3>

-Depending on your blogs template, your blog may be configured to use the H1/H2 tag, if you are having problems finding which tag is used for post-title, leave a comment below.

Now replace all instances of the above code with the code below:

<h3 class='post-title entry-title'>

-Save your template and check for warning messages in the rich snippets testing tool.

 

Fix for At least one field must be set for Hcard

We will add the “author name” hCard here:

-Add the following piece of code wherever you want your Name to be displayed.

<span class='post-author vcard'>
<b:if cond='data:top.showAuthor'>
<data:top.authorLabel/>
<span class='fn'><data:post.author/></span>
</b:if>
</span>

-Save your template.

-You may place the author card below the post title or at the bottom of the post.

-Now check your blog in the rich snippets testing tool and see if you’re receiving any warning message.

 

Fix for Warning: Missing required field "updated"

-Open your blogs template and add the following piece of code in your template wherever you want the post Timestamp to appear.

<a class='updated' expr:href='data:post.url' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='updated' expr:title='data:post.timestampISO8601'><data:post.timestamp/></abbr></a>

-You may place the timestamp below the post title or at the bottom of the post.

You can also hide the timestamp from your blog if you do not want to display it by wrapping it in hidden div tags. Use the following code if you want to hide the post timestamp.

Warning: Search engines may penalize your blog for hiding text and other elements from your blog; hence you must avoid such practices.

<div style='display:none’><a class='updated' expr:href='data:post.url' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='updated' expr:title='data:post.timestampISO8601'><data:post.timestamp/></abbr></a></div>

-Now save your template and check if the warning on the rich snippets testing tool has disappeared.

I know these hacks are a bit tricky to implement but feel free to leave a comment below if you're having problems applying any of these hacks on your BlogSpot blog and I would be happy to help you.

Labels : Blogger, Blogging Tips   | Posted by Sahil Patel   | 17:10