Rules: Schema & Structured Data

Structured data (schema.org) unlocks Google Rich Results—including star ratings, product pricing, FAQ accordions, and breadcrumbs directly within search snippets.

SCHEMA-001 — Malformed JSON-LD Syntax#

• Severity: ALERT (-5 pts)
• Heuristic: <script type="application/ld+json"> contains invalid JSON (e.g. unescaped quotes, trailing commas, or syntax errors).
• Why It Matters: Search engine parsers completely reject unparseable JSON blocks, losing all structured data.
• How to Fix: Validate your JSON with a linter and ensure server-side template serialization properly escapes special characters.

SCHEMA-002 — Missing Required Fields for Article#

• Severity: WARNING (-2 pts)
• Heuristic: An Article, NewsArticle, or BlogPosting schema is missing one or more required fields: headline, image, datePublished, or author.
• Why It Matters: Disqualifies the article from appearing in Google Top Stories and mobile rich carousels.
• How to Fix: Provide all required properties in your JSON-LD block:

  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "BlogPosting",
    "headline": "Modern SEO Crawling in Rust",
    "image": ["https://example.com/banner.jpg"],
    "datePublished": "2026-09-15T08:00:00+08:00",
    "author": {
      "@type": "Person",
      "name": "Jane Doe"
    }
  }

SCHEMA-003 — Missing Required Fields for Product#

• Severity: ALERT (-5 pts)
• Heuristic: A Product schema is missing name, image, or an offers block containing price and priceCurrency.
• Why It Matters: Disqualifies e-commerce product pages from showing rich price snippets and in-stock badges.
• How to Fix: Include an explicit offers object with price, priceCurrency, and availability.

SCHEMA-004 — Invalid BreadcrumbList Structure#

• Severity: WARNING (-2 pts)
• Heuristic: BreadcrumbList has non-sequential position integers or missing itemListElement arrays.
• Why It Matters: Search engines will display standard messy URLs instead of clean breadcrumb paths (Home > Category > Product).
• How to Fix: Ensure position increments sequentially starting from 1.