Currently, Google is sending out alerts via Search Console “Navigation path issues detected on
With this, Google wants to point out that they focus on the schema schema.org in the development of the crawler and no longer support metadata from the obsolete namespace data-vocabulary.org.
Google made the switch on April 6, 2020. Since then, only the more widely used schema.org schema is supported by the search engine.
What is structured data such as schema.org?
Structured data are instructions to search engines about specific meaning of data and how it relates to other data.
Without becoming too theoretical: Data about a page can be passed along separately in this way. If it is an eShop, for example, the title, the item number, the price, etc. can be given to the search engine without the crawler itself having to read out the information in the text on the page. After all, the latter is not so easy. With prices this might be possible, but with part numbers the question is where is it and what does it look like. To solve exactly this problem, there is structured data (see also ontology at Wikipedia).
Do I have to do anything about it?
Exactly who receives the message is not entirely clear to me. Maybe they get all webmasters. If you got this message, it does not mean that you have an acute problem.
If the CMS / ESHOP or the SEO plugin you are using supports schema.org metadata, then you don’t need to do anything else. If it is a current version, this should be the case. The developers of an actively developed system usually know and develop the software according to the current standards.
To test structured data on your own data, Google offers the online tool to test structured data (external link). If data about products (in the case of an online store), such as titles, prices, etc., appear there, everything is fine.
WooCommerce in the current version supports schema.org schema. WordPress can be provided with structured data according to schema.org with the help of YOAST SEO, among others. More information can be found at YOAST under this link: Structured data with Schema.org: the ultimate guide (external link).
Want to learn more about the topic? Another article on this topic can be found at t3n.de (external link).
