Search
Structured data is complete enough to be worth having
seo.structured-data-incomplete
Why this matters
Beyond the properties Google insists on, there are ones it uses when they are there and quietly does without when they are not. An article with no author or date, a business with no phone number, a product with no picture — each still works, and each gives a thinner result than the same page would get with the field filled in. It also matters more than it used to, because the systems that summarise pages for AI answers read the same markup.
Who fixes it
You can, usually
Roughly how long
1–2 hours
Care needed
Low risk to change
How to fix it
Work down the list per block. Most of these are values the page already displays to a visitor — the author's name, the phone number, the date — so the work is wiring them into the markup rather than finding them.
How we score it
Failing this check takes up to 6 points off your search score. It is a fact about your site rather than a measurement, so it reads the same on every scan until you change something.
Does your site pass this one?
This check runs on every scan, along with the other 106. Free, no account, and you see the evidence for each result.
Check my siteOther search checks
- Canonical tags point somewhere validA canonical tag tells Google which address is the real one for a page. When it points somewhere wrong — another domain, a dead page, or the wrong protocol — Google follows it anyway, and the page you wanted indexed can be dropped in favour of one that does not exist.
- Content has been updated recentlySome content is meant to sit still, and age alone is not a fault. But prices, opening hours and staff pages that have not been touched in over a year are usually wrong by now — and a visitor who acts on the wrong opening hours does not come back to check whether the rest was right.
- Descriptions are a sensible lengthLong descriptions get truncated mid-sentence; very short ones waste the space you are given.
- Each page has exactly one title tagA page can only have one title. When there are several, the browser and Google each pick one — and they do not always pick the same one, so what you see in the tab may not be what appears in search.
- Each page has one main headingSeveral top-level headings makes the structure of the page ambiguous. Worth checking rather than urgent — modern HTML permits it, and Google handles it, but it usually signals that headings are being chosen for their size.
- Every page has a main headingThe h1 is the headline of the page. Without one, both visitors skimming and search engines parsing the page have nothing telling them what it is about.