Bing adopts SpecialAnnouncement structured data for COVID-19

By George Nguyen

Published: March 23, 2020 at 11:26 am

Bing now supports the SpecialAnnouncement data type for coronavirus-related business, travel, government health agency and testing center updates, the company announced Monday.

Why we care

Applying the markup may produce a label showing your special announcement, with a link to your site, in web and local search results.

With the virus situation changing so quickly, businesses and agencies can use the markup to help communicate updates right from the search results.

More on the news

Business and travel-related special announcements must include the date it was posted and should include the announcement’s expiration date, if applicable.
The SpecialAnnouncement data type allows for date-stamped textual updates and markup to associate the announcement with a given situation and was introduced in Schema.org version 7.0 on March 16.
Bing has also launched an interactive COVID-19 tracker that shows data on the number of active, recovered and fatal cases, along with related news and videos, filtered by geographic region.
Google does not yet support the SpecialAnnouncement data type, said the company’s Public Search Liaison Danny Sullivan on March 19.

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About the author

George Nguyen

George Nguyen is the Director of SEO Editorial at Wix, where he manages the Wix SEO Learning Hub. His career is focused on disseminating best practices and reducing misinformation in search. George formerly served as an editor for Search Engine Land, covering organic and paid search.