Error in google webmaster tools

Blog ≫ 2016 ≫ Error in google webmaster tools

Tue Sep 6

I did an update on this site at the weekend, around the genealogy stuff. I added some structured data on the family tree pages, sometimes called microdata. It's not noticeable to humans but as no humans actually read the site (only me and loads of scraping robots) I thought I'd improve the bits of the site that are just for robots. What this means is adding attributes to the data to more clearly indicate what that content is. So this is not just some text rambling on about some stuff, this is info about a PERSON, and the PERSON has a NAME, and these are their PARENTS and these are their CHILDREN etc. I'm using schema.org/Person ¹ for this and have applied it to every page that has a family tree on. So for example the homepage and Dad's page and my page. Apart from Dad and myself we've kept everyone else who is still alive in the family private, so for example the site says he's my dad and I'm his son, but we don't list details for Mum or Kez or Nan or anyone else. For someone whose privacy we don't have to worry about like James Cole Clarke there should be a full set of data. Not sure how or even if someone else can use this data (and I'm not 100% sure it actually works for genealogical data) but there it is. I'll include it here as an illustration

[tree=14]

so now this page has some structured person data on it too... I can tell this by testing this page in Google Webmaster Tools structure data section. If I test the page it says something like

Person
  name  James Cole [CLARKE](/wiki/#clarke)
  birthDate 1866-05-01
  deathDate 1938-08-08
  parent
    http://www.clarkeology.com/names/clarke/18/james-cole
    name James [Cole](/wiki/#cole) CLARKE
    birthDate 1824-07-01
    deathDate 1865-11-28
  parent
    http://www.clarkeology.com/names/tribe/20/sarah
    name Sarah [Tribe](/wiki/#tribe)
    birthDate 1824-05-23
    deathDate 1887-09-05
  homeLocation
    England
  children
    http://www.clarkeology.com/names/clarke/53/james-cole
    name  James Cole CLARKE
    birthDate 1888-09-13
  children
    http://www.clarkeology.com/names/clarke/54/agnes-sarah
    name  Agnes Sarah CLARKE
    birthDate 1891-09-18
    deathDate 1893-11-28
  children
    http://www.clarkeology.com/names/clarke/42/edward-john
    name  Edward John CLARKE
    birthDate [1904](/wiki/#1904)
  children
    http://www.clarkeology.com/names/clarke/43/sarah-edith
    name  Sarah Edith CLARKE
    birthDate 1908-08-13
    deathDate [1998](/wiki/#1998)-10-13
  children
    http://www.clarkeology.com/names/clarke/3/ronald-leslie
    name  Ronald Leslie CLARKE
    birthDate 1911-10-23
    deathDate 1982-10-17
  children
    http://www.clarkeology.com/names/clarke/44/harry-cecil

There's a problem (no not the boringness of this all) that the top level report from Google Webmaster Tools does not give the same result as individually testing a page. It says Missing: homeLocation for all of them... WAT? homeLocation is not required, and anyway it is there (I added it to try and make the error go away). Also it's not crawling all of my family tree pages, only those I've submitted explicitly. Here's the report:

Page URL,Last Detected,Index,Name,No. of Errors,Errors
names/clarke/14/james+cole,9/3/16,#1 of 1,James Cole CLARKE 1866 - 1938,1,Missing: homeLocation
names/[samways](/wiki/#samways)/17/fanny+alice+grant,9/3/16,#1 of 1,Fanny Alice Grant SAMWAYS 1873 - 1953,1,Missing: homeLocation
names/clarke/1/barry+leslie,9/2/16,#1 of 1,Barry Leslie CLARKE 1947 -,1,Missing: homeLocation
[blog](/wiki/#blog)/14/board.html,9/2/16,#1 of 3,Thomas [VOKES](/wiki/#vokes),1,Missing: homeLocation
blog/14/board.html,9/2/16,#2 of 3,Thomas VOKES,1,Missing: homeLocation
blog/14/board.html,9/2/16,#3 of 3,Thomas VOKES,1,Missing: homeLocation
,9/2/16,#1 of 1,Barry Leslie CLARKE 1947 -,1,Missing: homeLocation
names/[mahon](/wiki/#mahon)/157/clare+[france](/wiki/#france)s,8/25/16,#1 of 1,Clare Frances MAHON 1978 -,0,
names/clarke/437/henry+patrick,8/25/16,#1 of 1,Henry Patrick Clarke 1887 - 1931,0,
names/tribe/20/sarah,8/21/16,#1 of 1,Sarah Tribe 1824 - 1887,0,
names/samways/45/john,8/21/16,#1 of 1,John SAMWAYS 1848 - 1925,0,
m/424,8/20/16,#1 of 1,Barry Leslie CLARKE 1947 -,0,
names/clarke/79/charles+[valentine](/wiki/#valentine),8/20/16,#1 of 1,[Charles Valentine CLARKE](/wiki/#charles/valentine/clarke) 1883 - 1912,0,
names/grant/46/matilda,8/18/16,#1 of 1,Matilda GRANT 1853 - 1933,0,
names/clarke/18/james+cole,8/18/16,#1 of 1,James Cole CLARKE 1824 - 1865,1,Missing: homeLocation
names/[rainey](/wiki/#rainey)/41/john+william,8/18/16,#1 of 1,John William RAINEY 1888 - 1945,1,Missing: homeLocation
names/lyman/40/gertrude,8/18/16,#1 of 1,Gertrude LYMAN 1891 - 1973,1,Missing: homeLocation
names/clarke/3/ronald+leslie,8/18/16,#1 of 1,Ronald Leslie CLARKE 1911 - 1982,1,Missing: homeLocation
names/rainey/57/samuel,8/18/16,#1 of 1,Samuel RAINEY 1860 -,1,Missing: homeLocation
names/lyman/689/eliza,8/18/16,#1 of 1,Eliza Lyman 1859 -,1,Missing: homeLocation
names/clarke/7/paul+leslie,8/18/16,#1 of 1,Paul Leslie CLARKE 1972 -,1,Missing: homeLocation
names/[windebank](/wiki/#windebank)/548/simon,8/18/16,#1 of 1,Simon Windebank 1657 -,0,
m/22804,8/16/16,#1 of 1,Thomas VOKES,0,
names/windebank/332/eli,8/15/16,#1 of 1,Eli WINDEBANK 1810 -,0,
m/47,8/15/16,#1 of 1,[Charles Valentine CLARKE](/wiki/#charles/valentine/clarke) 1883 - 1912,0,
names/unknown/536/fanny+lillia,8/14/16,#1 of 1,Fanny Lillian 1840 -,0,

These guys have the same issue ², so hopefully it's just some new hiccup and will be resolved soon.

Removed old schema.org/Person link here.
Removed old webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/98992/gsc-structured-data-error-for-missing-homelocation link here.

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