[Support request] A value for the itemListElement field is required.

[Sam]

Hi, I recently started getting errors in Google Search Console for pages that contain Yoast breadcrumbs. I did some debugging and I can see that disabling GP Premium fixes the issue, I assume this is because it stops the breadcrumbs from displaying.

I am implementing them using a hook with position “after_heaader” and shortcode and execute php checked. The code is:

<div class="breadcrumbs-navxt" typeof="BreadcrumbList" vocab="http://schema.org/">
[wpseo_breadcrumb]
</div>

Can you tell me what I have done wrong? If you look at the test: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.supereight.net%2Fjournal%2F

you can see the error.

https://www.supereight.net/journal/

thanks
Sam

[Sam]

note the code has not displayed above for some reason:

[wpseo_breadcrumb]

[Sam]

“

[wpseo_breadcrumb]

”

[Sam]

I don’t get it but it is that div with the short code in it:

[wpseo_breadcrumb]

[David]

Hi there,

I don’t know how the plugin gets the itemListElement value – as the Journal is the Blog which is different to a post/page/category archive it may be missing some of the post meta required to fill that field. have you spoken with the plugin author? If they have any advice we can take a closer look.

BTW – Shortcodes inside the <code></code> block don’t always display as WP tries to render the shortcode – but not a problem as i can see it by editing the topic

[Sam]

Hi David, the Journal page is just the name of the “blog” page I just renamed it to Journal to sound more “sophisticated” ; )

So it will behave as the blog page normally would. The plugin is Yoast SEO, it is THE most popular WP SEO plugin.. They say it is absolutely not an issue with their plugin and advised I do the old turn everything off then reactivate one by one. By doing that I see that GP Premium is causing the issue. This makes sense because I am using a hook to add the Yoast bread crumbs to the page so when GP premium is deactivated there would be no breadcrumbs on the page.

So the question is, is there something wrong with the code in the Hook, order with GP premium plugin itself in the way it is rendering the breadcrumbs on the page. Note that this does not happen to the breadcrumbs on the Woocommerce pages which are also Yoast breadcrumbs. But they may be different as you can just set Yoast to replace the Woo breadcrumbs rather than having to insert them with a hook or snippet.

Please let me know what you think.

[David]

GP doesn’t do anything with the breadcrumbs. Disabling GP Premium removes the hook and the breadcrumb hence the error goes away.

The JSON-LD that Yoast is adding does contain the itemListElement field.

I found this issue here re: breadcrumbs and how google likes to ignore it on unlinked items:

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/a-value-for-the-itemlistelement-field-is-required/

And also raised with Yoast, they choose to close it without a valid response:

https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo/issues/11030

Best bet would be to exclude the breadcrumb from the Blog seeing as google seems not to like it.

[Sam]

Hi David, the first link is not for Yoast, it is a different breadcrumbs plugin. The second link they ask the user to submit the bug using a provided template so I don’t know where I would find more info on that.

Doesn’t really help me debug the issue I am afraid.

Are you saying that the current item should be linked rather than unlinked? So I should exclude the unlinked item? I imagine removing the breadcrumb entirely would have a negative impact on the SEO…?

thanks

[David]

Have you changed anyything? As I see the same error on the single posts.
The woo pages are using the woo breadcrumbs not Yoasts.

I am not sure why you have this: <div class="breadcrumbs-navxt" typeof="BreadcrumbList" vocab="http://schema.org/"> around the shortcode ? Without this there are no errors reported.

[Author]

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