While testing Rich Snippet for blogger posts in rich snippet testing tool inside Google Webmaster Tools, I found Warning:Missing required fi...

missing required field updated blogger Google Search

While testing Rich Snippet for blogger posts in rich snippet testing tool inside Google Webmaster Tools, I found Warning:Missing required field “updated” problem. A lot of bloggers have advocated deleting hfeed and hentry fields to solve this problem. This indeed solves the problem, however, deleting a field whose function you don’t fully know may become the starting point of the unknown problems. So, I started exploring it further. Blogger gives you by default “published” timestamp field. A simple tweak of this gives the desired solution. Just find the following piece of code:

Copy it on a notepad and simply change it at two places, like this:

Now put the above code inside a div with display setting to none, like this:

<div style='display:none’><a class='updated' expr:href='data:post.url' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='updated' expr:title='data:post.timestampISO8601'><data:post.timestamp/></abbr></a></div>.

Put the above code anywhere in the body part of the template, maybe just below the “published” field. Save the template and now test again inside the rich snippet tool in Webmaster tools. Warning is Gone!

P.S.----> On 15th of March, 2012, Google updated its Rich snippet guidelines and has mentioned anything inside a “display:none” won’t be considered. So, you should find a place to show it to the readers of the blog too, and remove the <div style=’display:none’> from above including the closing </div> for rich snippet to work properly.