UPDATE: I am leaving this story as is but adding that my post was insensitive. I misinterpreted her question and embarrassed her. I am the one who should be embarrassed, not her. Here is my post, and I am sorry.
Sometimes I don't get how people can simply ask Google questions about how to spam Google. I mean, if you know something is specifically written and against Google's guidelines, why ask a Googler if it is okay to go against those guidelines? Do you think that Googler is going to say - yea, sure, go ahead, we are fine with you going against our webmaster guidelines?
But yet, I've seen this happen so many times on social media, in the forums and at conferences.
Here is one of the most recent examples on Twitter. An SEO said that the "Google docs it says not to add Product Schema to lists of products" and she then includes a screen shot of the policy from the Google docs. Then she goes on to say that people are telling her that if she does it anyway, it leads to positive traffic to the site - can she go ahead and do it since it is a traffic boost?
Here is her tweet:
@JohnMu Hello! In the Google docs it says not to add Product Schema to lists of products. Some talks i've seen say they've had traffic benefits from marking up multiple individual products on cat pages, Is this allowed/recommended? pic.twitter.com/Yn3YMibKdm
— Michelle (@Shelliweb) October 20, 2017
What do you expect John Mueller of Google to say here?
Here is how John Mueller responded, "so you're saying some SEOs recommend breaking the guidelines?"
So you're saying some SEOs recommend breaking the guidelines? (I don't know the specific situations, but that would be my interpretation :))
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) October 20, 2017
At least these finds are fun and we can all get a laugh out of it?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update from Michelle, so you get her perspective:
I was questioning whether I understood the docs correctly & what people were doing rather than asking whether it's ok to break the guidelines. Could have phrased it better yes... but glad I could give everyone a laugh will never ask questions again.
— Michelle (@Shelliweb) October 23, 2017
" Do you think that Googler is going to say - yea, sure, go ahead, we are fine with you going against our webmaster guidelines?" No I didn't, I wanted to check that what I assumed the docs meant were correct
— Michelle (@Shelliweb) October 23, 2017