Tip Tuesday: SEO Schema Errors? On Your Community?
Hey everyone! Today’s tip is all about a common SEO question we get—schema errors flagged by Google Search Console (GSC).
If you’ve ever seen warnings like "Either 'text', 'image', or 'video' should be specified," don’t panic! Let’s break down what’s going on and how to prevent these errors from popping up again.
What’s the Problem?
When GSC crawls your forum, it expects to find content it can easily index—typically some text, an image, or a video. Vanilla forums use the schema type DiscussionForumPosting, which tells Google that your content is user-generated and part of a discussion thread in a web forum (full details on this particular schema type here).
But here’s the catch: if the original post in a discussion doesn’t have any text, Google can’t pull anything useful to display in search results, Google won't return a result. Have you ever seen a Google search return that has a picture where the description snippet normally goes? That’s when you get flagged. We’ve seen this happen a lot with posts that are just a poll or contain only an image. Without text to provide context, Google treats it as incomplete.
A Quick Look at the Schema in Action
Here’s an example of what the schema looks like under the hood. You can find this on any Vanilla post by viewing the page source and searching for "@type". Try it out by copying this into your browser URL barview-source:https://success.vanillaforums.com/discussion/3265/new-feature-alert-sentiment-analysis
The schema shows up around line 180:
That particular schema won't cause a flag in Google so here is an example of one that will return an error:
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DiscussionForumPosting",
"headline": "This Is A Cool Title On A Discussion Post",
"discussionUrl": "https://forums.example.com/discussion/12162676",
"text": "",
"dateCreated": "1963-11-15",
"author": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Username"
}
}
The problem? That text field is empty. No text means Google can’t create a search snippet, which leads to the schema error.
Why Not Just Use "Image" or "Video"?
Good question! This is really just amounts to a technical limitation. Vanilla forums aren’t built to be image galleries or video-hosting platforms and there's not a good way for us to automatically update the schema type depending on what an end-user might type into a post. We love our users but there's no way for us to predict what they're going to do.
The DiscussionForumPosting schema is the correct type for the content your users are creating 99% of the time. If a URL using that schema type but doesn't provide any text, it causes search crawlers to get confused.
But How Do I Fix It?
Stop It from Happening in the Future
Set a Minimum Character Limit For Posts
Go to your forum’s Posting settings (/vanilla/settings/posting) and set a minimum character limit for new posts.
This way, even if someone only wants to share an image or a poll, they’ll need to include a bit of text to explain it. This tiny tweak can prevent a lot of schema headaches.
Have Clear Purposes For Your Categories
The Vanilla Support team sees these errors pop-up in audits the most often if a site has a 'general' category setup for off-topic discussion. These are generally fine - they build community and help engage people 'off the clock' but users are also more likely to drop a single image or poll in these sections without much textual context.
Having a thought-out category tree with specific categories makes it far less likely for users to post in the wrong place and encourages them to write meaningful posts, which helps confirm that category as the right place for their discussion.
A site administrator can help this along by making sure all category descriptions are well-written and clearly define what kind of content can be found in that category.
Having an announced 'How To Post' guide in a category is also a good way to set expectations for the content being made in that category.
What About Old Posts?
For older posts, the only real fix is to manually update the ones you care about by adding some context or text. However, this can be time-consuming, so prioritize the posts that matter most to your community or SEO goals.
The Good News: Schema Errors Won’t Hurt Your SEO
Before you worry too much, here’s a reassuring fact: schema errors like these won’t damage your community's overall SEO ranking. Google has confirmed that these errors simply mean the affected posts might not get indexed properly, but your domain as a whole is safe. Don't take my word for it though - here is Google (specifically Gary Illyes) confirming that statement (video queued to 10:56 mark):
"Short answer is no. The long answer is also no, because if we can't parse it, we just won't use it. That might mean that you'll miss out on some search features like rich attributes under your snippets though."
So, while it’s worth addressing, it’s not a critical issue. A post without text is simply less likely to show up in search results.
