When Google talks specifically to you you should take it at a compliment. That’s why we were so happy when Google announced on Google+ yesterday:
“Hey Beanstalk – nice work on your live blogging of the State Of Search Conference. Now that it’s the next day we think we’ll launch the Schema that supports it.”
Alright, obviously that’s not how the post reads but it it frustratingly timed from our perspective. But alas, they didn’t call to ask us if that would be inconvenient. I should have taken the time to ask Gary Illyes about it when I had the chance. But let’s get to this announcement …
Live Blog Schema
There is a new schema specifically for live blogs and it is available on the Google Developers site at https://developers.google.com/structured-data/carousels/live-blogs. You can get a feel for what this will do in the results via an image they posted:
One question … do you think they’re focused on mobile?
What we’re seeing …
At the State Of Search conference we were hearing over-and-over a confirmation of what everyone in the industry saw coming … a move to Google providing answers. Jennifer Slegg did a great presentation on featured snippets and pretty much nailed what we’re seeing here … Google keeping visitors on Google. She did touch on some key aspects to help webmasters monetize and drive traffic in this new world but it’s becoming increasingly obvious with each “enhancement” they make that Google is working hard to help their searchers find what they want as fast as possible and if that means not even making them click to your site … so be it.
Publishers will need to develop new ways to monetize their information (if they can) and the battleground for product and service sales is about to undergo a major transformation. Trying to keep up can be difficult but it’s necessary and we’ll do our best here on you do so on our blog to help. Of course, you’re welcome to read others as well. 🙂