NB: This is a guest article by Larry Smith, a partner at Thematix.
A year ago, Google, Bing (Microsoft) and Yahoo announced Schema.org: a taxonomy that would allow webpages to self-describe their content.
This, it was hoped, would help produce more accurate, specific and relevant search engine results.
Unfortunately, Schema.org does not support anything specific to hotels or other travel suppliers, so their ability to make the offerings explicit is very limited.
Schema.org was nevertheless great news because using even the existing mark-up worked to elevate search engine optimization and yield a positive ROI (case study here).
Last month, Google announced its semantically driven “knowledge graph” to provide answers rather than just page links.
For example, a search for “Miami Florida” produces a crisp summary about the city – its geography, population, points of interest and so on.
The knowledge graph, as Google describes it, deals in “things not strings” – Google is intent on “knowing” about the entity you’re searching for, rather than merely matching strings of letters to an index.
Thematix is of the opinion that, in many cases, pages marked up with Schema.org tags will show similar multimedia summaries in the knowledge graph.
Building upon these semantic activities, Good Relations recently announced an Accommodations Ontology that defines additional semantic tags for hotels and other lodging like camps and vacation homes.
At the OpenTravel Alliance conference in April 2012, Thematix shared An Open Letter to Hoteliers as a means of marshaling industry discussion and adoption of standard tags, connected to accepted XML schema published by the OpenTravel Alliance, as defined by the industry rather than uninformed outsiders.
Thematix has just published a first draft of proposed extensions to Schema.org and an associated OWL file to that it believes would meet common hotel industry needs.
These extensions permit hoteliers to go beyond the basics of being a generic “local business” to referencing hotel specifics such as a room, features, services, amenity, and room rates, thereby informing the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) in greater and more precise detail.
The ground is swelling and the industry is at another intersection of technology invading business merchandising and marketing practices.
Do we get on the playing field or watch from the sidelines?
It’s fairly clear that if hotels and other travel companies advocate for their definitions of important attributes, benefits and characteristics, the search and technology providers will follow.
Let’s engage. Time to test a pilot program or two. We’ve even made it easy.
If you’re a fire-ready-aim type, start at the Hotel Microdata Generator created by Zack Flannick that uses the Schema.org extensions proposed by Thematix. Fill out the form and paste it into a property page you’ve set-up with all the appropriate metrics and KPIs.
While Schema.org or any of the search giants do not formally recognize the new extensions, there is also little risk: what the search-bots don’t understand they will ignore.
Over time, when the volume hits some threshold, the search, SEO and technology companies will de facto accept these standards to the benefit of the industry.
NB: This is a guest article by Larry Smith, a partner at Thematix.
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Interesting proposal! Worth giving it a try!
Very very interesting. There’s a few markups that would work to increase SERP CTR at the moment – I love what Venere.com does with phone numbers (search site:venere.com hotels in NYC to see what I mean). But a number of standardized extensions would be welcome. And very much appreciated. Thanks @Zack for taking the initiative, and thanks @Larry for the article.
@Chistina
@Cleo
Thanks for the comments and please share any results. Ping us at info at thematix dot com if you need some help.
indeed very interesting. i am currently relaunching the websites of a small hotel management company incorporating schema.org with a bit of OG (after having debated over the sole use of open graph or RDFa). I wish the schema definition would be out already, Knowing about your initiative, I will now amend to your proposal where I see fit.
Good initiative here, Larry! But there are issues… I played with the meta generator and found that the code refers to items NOT currently in the official schema. For ex: itemtype=”http://schema.org/RoomType” would not resolve because there’s no such itemtype at official schema at http://schema.org/Hotel
So, while this is a good step in the right direction, just adding these on your site may not result in the desired effect. There should be some way to engage official Schema.org to recognize the extensions.
Hi Anil: the code that the meta generator creates is indeed NOT in Schema currently. That is the point: to show how the proposed extensions might be used.
Schema.org itself anticipates extensions (http://schema.org/docs/extension.html). If extensions become widely and consistently used, the search engines will start honoring and using them whether or not Schema.org incorporates them into its corpus.
Although the Google validator (http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=&view=cse) will burp when you use extensions, extensions will not break your page or otherwise harm your presence on Google or Bing.
The way to engage the official Schema.org and, ideally, have them incorporate the extensions into the standard itself, is to show broad consensus and use within the hospitality industry. We are hoping to kick off that conversation and those conventions.
best,
Rob
Thanks Robert, hope it works as you planned. I have my doubts on hotels giving this the priority as much as we expect – most wouldn’t even have heard of schema.
You’re right, of course, Anil — there is an awareness issue. Any thoughts about how to overcome this?
Your (Thematix) articles on Schema are a good beginning. Hope hotels are reading this
having had a closer look at the proposed extension of the schema definition, there is not only awareness from hotels needed, there is also still a lot of work to both the extension and the generator to be done, e.g. room type definitions should be used, the usage of ratings and reviews clarified and the microdata generator e.g. totally omits opening hours, a crucial aspect for outlets. i did not find a board at thematix to propose further changes – robert, would you mind pointing out where i could add these?
@Anil
Thanks for the great comments. We think some of the awareness will self generate when a few hotels start using the Schema tags and get rewarded with better SERPs. This will trigger discussions amongst the SEO groups to figure out how to use these new tools and how to get even greater rewards.
@Martin
and some extensions like ratings & reviews are already in the current Schema.org specifications so no need to replicate.
Exactly correct that not everything is included in this Thematix version, but it is Free
Also, we’ll put up and publish here, a place to leave comments, but in the mean time you can send any comments to info at thematix dot com.
Congratulations, Larry and Thematix, for publishing your recent Lodging Schema — especially publishing the proposed Hotel Schema in OWL.
This is a vital topic for hoteliers and one, sadly, that is being ignored. The industry is, as noted in my blog post titled Incest is Killing Creativity in Hotel Marketing, http://bit.ly/PD6YC4, blinded by hindsight. The ones who adopt this early will certainly benefit as is demonstrated by the remarkable uptick in visits for the Hilton Virginia Beach case study.
I recommend reaching out to HSMAI’s Digital Marketing SIG http://hsmai.org/Members/SIGTravelMarketing.cfm#About to get them involved.
Great post Larry. I have worked with Thematix and the results are amazing! These guys really are onto something. Every industry should take note!