A few questions on Google's Structured Data Markup Helper...

[howlusa]

I'm trying to go through my site and add microdata with the help of Google's Structured Data Markup Helper. I have a few questions that I have not been able to find an answer for. Here is the URL I am referring to: http://www.howlatthemoon.com/locations/location-chicago

1. My company is a bar/club, with only 4 out of 13 locations serving food. Would you mark this up as a local business or a restaurant?
2. It asks for "URL" above the ratings. Is this supposed to be the URL that ratings are on like Yelp or something? Or is it the URL for the page? Either way, neither of those URLs are on the page so I can't select them. If it is for Yelp should I link to it?
3. How do I add reviews? Do they have to be on the page?
4. If I make a group of days for Day of the Week for Opening hours, such as Mon-Thu, will that work out?
5. I have events on this page. However, when I tried to do the markup for just the event it told me to use  itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Event" on the body tag of the page. That is just a small part of the page, I'm not sure why I would put the event tag on the whole body?

Any other tips would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[RobertFisher]

Howl,

1. I would mark all up as a food establishment. Under menu/cuisine where you serve no food I would simply put an alcohol menu or link or on cuisine put we server beer, wine, tequila. etc. The reason is this: you are using schema because it is good for you and the search engines. Within the various schema are other properties. So for FoodEstablishment there is ... Bar or Pub. A bar or pub is a food establishment. So is an ice cream shop, winery, brewery, etc.

2. This is the page url. For me in Houston... http://www.howlatthemoon.com/locations/location-houston

3. I suggest you put in your own review schema and make the site where your customers can review you. Why would you want to serve yelp?? What do they do for you? Your site is using Joomla and with a quick check I found several review plugins you could utilize to make life simpler. We do not use Joomla as much but we often use a review plugin with our WP sites. And, it passes the markup test with Google.

4. Opening Hours - Here is the schema for opening hours. Pretty easy. If you look at the bottom of Local Business, you will see what will or will not work.

5. Here is the actual event schema from Schema.org

1. Upcoming shows

2. <div< span="">itemprop="event"itemscopeitemtype="http://schema.org/Event"></div<>

3. <a< span="">href="foo-fighters-may20-fedexforum"itemprop="url"></a<>

4. <span< span="">itemprop="name">FedExForum</span<>

5. <span< span="">itemprop="location">Memphis, TN, US</span<>

6. <meta< span="">itemprop="startDate"content="2011-05-20">May 20</meta<>

7. <a< span="">href="ticketmaster.com/foofighters/may20-2011"itemprop="offers">Buy tickets</a<>

8. <div< span="">itemprop="event"itemscopeitemtype="http://schema.org/Event"></div<>

9. <a< span="">href="foo-fighters-may23-midamericacenter"itemprop="url"></a<>

10. <span< span="">itemprop="name">Mid America Center</span<>

11. <span< span="">itemprop="location">Council Bluffs, IA, US</span<>

12. <meta< span="">itemprop="startDate"content="2011-05-23">May 23</meta<>

13. <a< span="">href="ticketmaster.com/foofighters/may23-2011"itemprop="offers">Buy tickets</a<>

So, you are going down the right path, I have never been to Howl in Houston but will check it out.

Best,

Robert

[Ron_McCabe]

You can do either but the net effect is different.  If you set things up for reviews on your page you will get these reviews indexed as content on your page and if marked up properly this will index on the major review sites(excluding Yelp I believe).  You also have the advantage of control over what is or is not published.  The down side to this is that you will need someone with skills to program this and do the mark up properly.  You also need someone managing this prt of the web site.

The other way is to use an embedded link for the review sites.  This will get the reviews done off of your site.  These off site reviews can create inbound links. For Yelp this is pretty much the only way to do it.

I would factor in the review sites people use for Bars in Chicago, is it Redeye, Yelp, or Citysearch for example.  I would set up my site that favors where people look for reviews when deciding whether or not to come to your business.

Hope this is clearer than mud.

Ron

[howlusa]

Thanks for the response. So to clarify, to use the reviews I must have the actual reviews on the page. They cannot simply be linked to without putting them on the actual page?

[Ron_McCabe]

Ok let's go through these questions on by one below:

My company is a bar/club, with only 4 out of 13 locations serving food. Would you mark this up as a local business or a restaurant?

I would mark the locations that have food as restaurants and the ones that do not as local business. I would set up and write a unique description for each location.

It asks for "URL" above the ratings. Is this supposed to be the URL that ratings are on like Yelp or something? Or is it the URL for the page? Either way, neither of those URLs are on the page so I can't select them. If it is for Yelp should I link to it?

You can either link to your off site reviews sites by getting an embed code or you can write some code with structured mark up to embed reviews into your web site that will be indexed by the search engines. There are references on line about how to do this.

How do I add reviews? Do they have to be on the page?

Look at answer above.  As a sidenote you should make it a mission to get 10 reviews on Yelp, Google, and Bing for each location as this helps your local results.

If I make a group of days for Day of the Week for Opening hours, such as Mon-Thu, will that work out?

Yes

I have events on this page. However, when I tried to do the markup for just the event it told me to use  itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Event" on the body tag of the page. That is just a small part of the page, I'm not sure why I would put the event tag on the whole body?

Can't help you on this one.