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[Prototype] Development Sprint - Schema.org COVID-19 Announce #9163

Closed johnhashva closed 4 years ago

johnhashva commented 4 years ago

User Story or Problem Statement

How might we use organic search (e.g. Google, Bing) to more effectively communicate COVID-19 announcements (e.g. emergency national protocols, etc.) to veterans and stakeholders?

Goal

Determine if new schema markup -- or via Google submission process can be "easily" implemented, maintained and tracked for performance by VA.gov.

Government Policy or Mandate

On April 15, 2020, a blog post from the White House directed that federal government websites add “SpecialAnnouncement” schema.org tags on web pages with information pertaining to the coronavirus pandemic to help ensure these critical resources appear in search engine results.

Objectives or Key Results this is meant to further

Acceptance Criteria

Example Screenshots

USA.gov COVID-19 Special Announcement

Screen Shot 2020-05-20 at 3 07 19 PM

Current VA.gov COVID-19 Search Results

Screen Shot 2020-05-21 at 1 03 53 PM

Low Fidelity Wireframe of VA.gov Special Announcement

Screen Shot 2020-05-21 at 1 04 03 PM

How to configure this issue

johnhashva commented 4 years ago

Recap of discussion with Jen and follow-ons:

Per Jen convo:

Other updates:

johnhashva commented 4 years ago

Is implementation of Schema.org Special Announcement a directive or mandate?

White House April 15 directive on Schema.org Special Announcement for COVID-19 information:

In an effort to enhance the visibility of coronavirus information online for the American public, The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have directed Federal Chief Information Officers to incorporate these new Schema.org standard tags into all federally maintained webpages related to COVID-19. In addition, OSTP and OMB are encouraging the private sector, State and local governments, and the academic community to do the same.

johnhashva commented 4 years ago

Will implementation/activation improve VA search results ranking?

Per David Kaufmann at USA.gov: Adding the markup will not improve the results ranking for any given page. A page won’t be listed higher in search results pages than it normally would by adding the markup. But while using schema.org tags like this does not improve position in search results, if a page already ranks highly for a certain query and that page has supported schema.org markup on it, the special treatment for that page’s listing may be triggered.

johnhashva commented 4 years ago

Is manual submission a better approach than markup?

Manual submission of Special Announcements (as opposed to implementation of the Schema.org markup) come with two caveats: the announcements have early expiration dates (30 days), and Bing and other search engines do not get the information.

stephorkandatx commented 4 years ago

@ncksllvn noting that Kevin Walsh has said there may be areas CMS team can support us on with this, or some implications related to the output of this discovery. Something to keep in mind as we move forward

johnhashva commented 4 years ago

@jenniferlee-dsva Update on White House directive about this -- David Kaufmann at USA.gov says his interpretation is that implementation of Schema.org COVID-19 markup is a "mandate."

ncksllvn commented 4 years ago

The Facility Locator may actually be a pretty good use case. Check out my Google results -

image

So then this little banner could be really easily converted into a special announcements...

image

The only part of the special announcement that still throws me off is that special announcements have to have an expiration

johnhashva commented 4 years ago

Update from @DanielleThierryUSDSVA : @lalexanderson-dsva and @jenniferlee-dsva have approved the wireframe mockup and our approach for the VA COVID-19 Search Results prototype test (e.g. we will build, deploy and use Google Search Console to track impressions, CTRs and bounce rate). Next steps:

johnhashva commented 4 years ago

6/5 Update:

johnhashva commented 4 years ago

6/8 Update:

@ncksllvn here are details on how we can track the performance of our COVID-19 Special Announcement/FAQs via Google Search Console. The TL/DR:

image

ncksllvn commented 4 years ago

I'm checking USA.gov Coronavirus FAQs via Google in an In Cognito tab while trying to figure out how we're supposed to properly encode the HTML inside the JSON. Pretty cool -

image

image

They have a lot of content packed in there.

ncksllvn commented 4 years ago

First attempt at drafting this into schema.org - https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/vets-website/blob/9c9b305021b77dbf2a90a013682bdcc229a497f8/src/site/includes/coronavirus-schema-org.json.liquid -

<script type="application/ld+json">
  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "FAQPage",
    "mainEntity": [
      {
        "@type": "Question",
        "name": "How will COVID-19 affect my VA health care and benefit services?",
        "acceptedAnswer": {
          "@type": "Answer",
          "text": "&lt;p&gt;Visit our &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.va.gov/coronavirus-chatbot/&quot;&gt;coronavirus chatbot&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.va.gov/coronavirus-veteran-frequently-asked-questions/&quot;&gt;frequently asked questions (FAQs)&lt;/a&gt; for up-to-date answers.&lt;/p&gt;"
        }
      },
      {
        "@type": "Question",
        "name": "Is my local VA health facility or regional office open?",
        "acceptedAnswer": {
          "@type": "Answer",
          "text": "&lt;p&gt;Get the latest information about hours, services, and COVID-19 safety measures for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.va.gov/find-locations&quot;&gt;VA locations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;"
        }
      },
      {
        "@type": "Question",
        "name": "How many COVID-19 patients have been tested or treated at VA facilities?",
        "acceptedAnswer": {
          "@type": "Answer",
          "text": "&lt;p&gt;Review our &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.accesstocare.va.gov/Healthcare/COVID19NationalSummary&quot;&gt;COVID-19 national summary&lt;/a&gt; for data by state and VA facility.&lt;/p&gt;"
        }
      },
      {
        "@type": "Question",
        "name": "What's VA doing to deal with COVID-19?",
        "acceptedAnswer": {
          "@type": "Answer",
          "text": "&lt;p&gt;Learn&nbsp;about our &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.publichealth.va.gov/n-coronavirus/&quot;&gt;public health response&lt;/a&gt; to the coronavirus pandemic.&lt;/p&gt;"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
</script>
johnhashva commented 4 years ago

6/9: Note to @ncksllvn -- @DanielleThierryUSDSVA is working to get approval for the FAQ content. She will provide an update this week when that's in hand.

ncksllvn commented 4 years ago

Schema.org PoC

TypeAhead (unrelated to this issue)

johnhashva commented 4 years ago

6/10 Update: for @ncksllvn -- word back from Google on the questions we had re: COVID-19 FAQs display/impressions and tracking of specific links w/in the FAQ:

  1. There is no pre-stablished period for the site to be indexed or live - implementing structured data makes you eligible for rich results, but it does not guarantee it will appear in search results. Read more about general structured data guidelines at https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/sd-policies

  2. You should not assume you'll find rich results every time you search for any query. Google systems use a multitude of signals to decide whether to serve a rich result or not.

  3. You cannot use GA parameters to track organic search traffic. The best way for you to analyze your performance is to look at the Search Console Performance report. There you can filter the report by any specific rich result and check which pages and queries are generating impressions and clicks for it. Learn more at https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7576553

  4. This article claims implementation of FAQ markup can result in better search ranking and higher CTRs. https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2020/06/12/how-to-win-at-seo-with-faq-schema-markup/

ncksllvn commented 4 years ago

Per this - https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/va.gov-team/issues/9863 - we are good to go for launching the FAQ Page schema!

ncksllvn commented 4 years ago

Merged the work for implementing the schema.org structure - https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/vets-website/pull/13002

This will go on the website today, but we'll need to manually search Google for the coming days to see when it takes effect.

Last time we tried verifying schema.org changes, it was difficult - we weren't able to see the effects on Google search. We were using the Microdata format then though, so we may see better results with the JSON LD format.

johnhashva commented 4 years ago

Note: I will begin monitoring Google Search Console which should capture impressions and clicks for this FAQ in the rich results tab. Will report out results weekly for the first two full weeks of run.

stephorkandatx commented 4 years ago

@johnhashva thank you in advance for the monitoring. I will close this out later today, after this work is in production. Future updates will be written separately.

stephorkandatx commented 4 years ago

Keeping in Validate as the analytics are captured. Will take at least a few days to ensure data is flowing correctly

stephorkandatx commented 4 years ago

@johnhashva I'd like to close this one out - any future improvements or learnings can be captured in another ticket. Let me know if you have any concerns. Thanks!

johnhashva commented 4 years ago

@stephorkandatx I'm of two thoughts here: We keep it open until we confirm it is "working as intended" -- e.g. generating impressions and clicks to measure effectiveness in driving referral traffic (I should have made it clear that this is part of the acceptance criteria). OR, close it, and I can generate another ticket that covers what we may need to do to make sure this feature is index-able by Google (we think there may be a page error that disqualifies it for Rich Results). Let me know which you think is wiser and I'll make it happen.

stephorkandatx commented 4 years ago

Because of the current acceptance criteria, and the fact that we did the work last sprint but the ticket remains "open" and is lingering, I recommend we close this out and create a new ticket to make the work indexable. It will be better to track what work was done, and when.

johnhashva commented 4 years ago

Got it -- I'll compose a new ticket once I validate the work effort with Nick (we are scheduled to meet on this tomorrow). TY.

MickinSahni commented 4 years ago

10772 - follow-on work re this ticket.

Closing this particular ticket out.