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Can I be penalised by using rich snippet?

by johnwinch42
3 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello,

I would like to make my homepage stand apart from the serp to have the best ctr possible. I've read that you can display thumbnail for your site in the search results. (I'm not talking about Google+ authorship).

So far the only microdata that I've found is from a recipe snippet, will I be penalised if my site is not about recipes? I just need a way to display a thumbnail for my homepage.

Best regards,


HTML Code:
<div itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Recipe" >
  <h1 itemprop="name">test</h1>
  <img itemprop="photo" src="thumb2.jpg" /> 


  <span itemprop="review" itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Review-aggregate">
    <span itemprop="rating">4.0</span> stars based on
    <span itemprop="count">35</span> reviews </span>
<span itemprop="price">Free</span>


</div>
#penalised #rich #snippet
  • Profile picture of the author SEOtraveler
    I wouldn't recommend that. In February Google started to manually penalize site owners who use 'spammy' structured markup on their websites (check out more info on that [How to] Avoid Google's new penalty: spammy rich snippets). While this penalty is manual so far, there's a chance you'll get away with that. Still, it's not the best practice for sure.
    Is there really nothing more relevant for your content?
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    • Profile picture of the author johnwinch42
      Originally Posted by SEOtraveler View Post

      I wouldn't recommend that. In February Google started to manually penalize site owners who use 'spammy' structured markup on their websites (check out more info on that [How to] Avoid Google's new penalty: spammy rich snippets). While this penalty is manual so far, there's a chance you'll get away with that. Still, it's not the best practice for sure.
      Is there really nothing more relevant for your content?
      Thanks for your answer, I liked the idea to display a thumbnail for my homepage

      I was thinking of putting some star ratings, do they have any restrictions?
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    You don't need schema tags on your webpage for showing video thumbnail images in the SERPs, If that's the thumbnail image your trying to get.
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