Support for SpecialAnnouncement schema is coming to Google search

Google search will adopt the SpecialAnnouncement structured data type, the company announced Tuesday. Although support is still in development, Google has published guidelines for using it on COVID-19-related announcements and site owners can already begin marking up their content with it. At the time of publishing, Google did not announce a specific rollout date for the data type in search results.

Why we care

The SpecialAnnouncement data type can be applied to information from government and health organizations, schools and other entities that publish urgent updates.

Marking up your special announcements can help keep users informed about event and quarantine updates, travel restrictions, school and public transportation closures, shelter-in-place orders, new drive-through coronavirus testing center openings and more, right from the search results page.

More on the news

• Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool is currently showing errors for the announcementLocation property. “This is because the property is new to Schema.org,” Google’s guidelines on the new data type reads. “You can disregard the error, and refer to the documentation for the most up to date set of requirements until we update the tool.”
• Schema.org introduced the SpecialAnnouncement data type in version 7.0 of its guidelines, released on March 16, with the coronavirus pandemic in mind. The CovidTestingFacility data type and eventAttendanceMode property were also introduced at the same time.
• Bing adopted the SpecialAnnouncement data type on March 23.

About The Author

George Nguyen

George Nguyen is an editor for Search Engine Land, covering organic search, podcasting and e-commerce. His background is in journalism and content marketing. Prior to entering the industry, he worked as a radio personality, writer, podcast host and public school teacher.