Another week and another update for the Genesis Agent Profiles plugin!
As of Genesis 2.0, StudioPress included schema.org microdata markup for most site elements including header, navigation, blog content, and sidebar content, among others. We’re extending the microdata already in your Genesis site by adding it to the elements in this plugin: Agent Profiles and Listings (if connected).
If you don’t already have the Genesis Agent Profiles plugin, go ahead and download it now!
Since day one of the plugin, we’ve included a type of structured data markup, called Microformats. In our latest update (v1.1.1), we’ve now included another type of structured data, called schema.org microdata to your agent profiles, and if you have connected AgentPress listings, it’s also included on those.
You may be wondering… What is schema.org microdata and why do I care?
As mentioned, schema.org microdata is a type of structured data markup. In a nutshell, structured data markup is HTML added to the source code of your website that makes it easy for computers (search engines) to determine the type of data they’re retrieving. Once those computers know exactly what type of data is on your site they can display that data in a way that is most beneficial to users. You may have already seen this in action in your search results with rich snippets that show:
- Google+ profiles next to articles
- Ratings next to recipes, movies, or anything with reviews
Google has a schema.org FAQ that goes a little more in depth.
At this time, the data may or may not be used in search results, but we believe that as microdata is more widely used, search engines will take more advantage of it. So by having it on your site now, you’re already ahead of the curve!
After installing the update, you probably want to see what the extracted data looks like and how it may look in search results. Luckily, Google provides a Structured Data Testing Tool to help with that. In our tests, the agent’s title and location were being shown in the example search preview, but they warn this is not necessarily what you will see in your search results.
Here is a sample of the data extracted from an example agent profile:
As you can see, it pulls in the agent’s name, title, location, profile image URL, and even their connected listings URL, address, and price info.
As an aside, we updated the plugin today to add images to the microdata, so the plugin is now at version 1.1.2.
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