In July 2020 we reported that SEOs were not happy that Google was going to deprecate the Structured Data Testing Tool. Well, Google heard that loud and clear and announced that it will instead not deprecate the tool but migrated it off Google and onto Schema.org.
Ryan Levering, Google Search Engineering, wrote "we've heard your feedback" and said Google will be "migrating it to a new domain serving the schema.org community by April 2021." Google said if you want to test how your rich results will look and validate for Google Search, use the Rich Results Test but if you want to validate any structured data for syntax and compliance of markup with schema.org standards, then use the Structured Data Testing Tool (which will be moving in April).
The Structured Data Testing Tool "going forward will no longer check for Google Search rich result types," Google said.
Dan Brickley from Google who runs Schema.org posted more details on Twitter and Github about a Schema Markup Validator: adopting SDTT to add validation to http://Schema.org site" - proposal to give Google's Structured Data Testing Tool a new home at http://Schema.org.
Here is some of the feedback from the SEO community on this news:
Thank you for keeping it alive!!!!!
β Justin Mosebach (@jlmosebach) December 15, 2020
You've heard feedback? YEESSS!! π We have an update? DO YOU???ππ ...Structured Data Test Tool.π€¦ββοΈBring back the Request Indexing feature... you know... the elephant in the room pic.twitter.com/5He7astoSC
β Artur Jach (@arthurjach) December 15, 2020
Thank you for keeping it alive. Structured Data Testing Tool helps more and it is better than Rich Results Testing Tool.
β Dinesh Kumar (@dineshrockie) December 15, 2020
Structured Data Testing Tool just got a new life. :)#SEO
β Praveen Sharma (@MusingPraveen) December 15, 2020
π https://t.co/pCEuNZfpep
The structured data testing tool lives on. This is great news. https://t.co/DQjZULKGVP
β gareth_brown (@gareth_brown) December 15, 2020
Nice. The Structured Data Testing Tool will live on, as a tool for validating https://t.co/R9k3SPng1Y mark-up (but not Google rich result eligibility). https://t.co/OTonzlrYI0
β Chris Mastris (@Cmastris) December 15, 2020
YESSSSSSS!!!!!!! https://t.co/UtnnGvfoAj
β Dan Brooks π€π (@seodanbrooks) December 15, 2020
Nice to see it will continue to exist tho :) https://t.co/nA292hNok2
— Aleyda Solis (@aleyda) December 15, 2020
and Gary:
πΆ starting to feel like christmas πΆ https://t.co/3rJjGFgCqw
β Gary ι―¨ηοΌκ²½λ¦¬ Illyes (@methode) December 15, 2020
Forum discussion at Twitter.
