A couple of days ago Google's John Mueller made a very big announcement. He provided us with an insight into the search engine's future by revealing that Google might consider structured markup in their ranking algorithm in 2016.

"So, I think in the long run, it will definitely make sense to use structured data where you see that as being reasonable on the web site."

Google had already stated that webmasters could add structured data to help the crawlers and added the feature to Google webmaster tools some time ago, It was always known that it will not affect how a page ranks on Google, but this statement now confirms that Google now is considering structured data as a valuable tool in 2016 to help it rank pages better?

What is Structured Markup?

Structured data allows search engines to not only crawl your site, but to truly understand it. Most modern websites are generated from data that is stored in databases; when this data is formatted into HTML code by the server, it can be difficult for web crawlers to effectively interpret this information. Structured data is on-page markup that enables search engines to better understand the information currently on your business's web page, and then use this information to improve your business's search results listing.

Structured data, such as telling the search engines that you are a local business or identifying user added testimonials so the search engine don't penalise your site for poor spelling and grammar is becoming and important part of a websites code structure... its a way of having content for humans and extra content just for the search engines.

At the moment no open source website packages or drag and web design software tools fully utilise Structured data so this need to be undertaken by a web design professional with a working knowledge of HTML and web design structure, so when Structured data does become a ranking factor in Google's next algorithm update we should see less "have a go" package installers or IT companies using drag and drop software and hoping and end of poor, amateur web design... here's hoping.