Google has recently announced the termination of data-vocabulary.org structured data for rich results. According to Google, the usage of data-vocabulary.org microdata will not be eligible for rich results from the beginning of April 2020.
All websites with data-vocabulary.org are advised to move to schema.org structured data to be eligible for Google rich results.

What Are Rich Results?

Rich results are sites and webpages highlighted by Google in a much more elaborated form on the top position in the SERPs- search engine result pages. These are often grouped in the form of carousels depending on the data type. Thus, even if you do not rank in the regular results on Google, with rich results users will get to see your content first.
With rich results, users get a better outlook on the links that Google provides. Such results are not just grouped but have an enticing presentation that often includes a map snippet, rating and review section which makes it easy for the users to decide whether if the result is relevant.

How Do I Tag Rich Results?

Rich results can be marked up in many ways, but the most commonly used language is Schema. This universal vocabulary is used to add tags and code snippets on webpages and its elements to make it understandable for the search engine. The better the tagging, the better the crawl bot reaches your content and ranks it.
Usually, the JSON-LD format chunk code is used to attribute elements and content on the webpages for crawl bots to easily make way through. JSON-LD is Google’s preferred structured format. Thus, it is high time to switch to Schema.org rather than sticking to data-vocabulary.org.

How Google Update May Affect Rich Results?

In 2009 Google implemented the data-vocabulary.org to create rich results which was later superseded by Schema.org in 2011. Until now, Google has been supporting both these microdata types to rank results but after the recent official announcement, only sites with Schema.org will be crawled in.
Google explained it as: “As of April 6, 2020, data-vocabulary.org mark-up will no longer be eligible for Google rich result features.”
Following this update, Google will be sending notices to websites still using the older code snippets.
As a webmaster, always keep your site’s structured data up to date without waiting for the deadlines to haunt you!
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