It has been stated that the google plus-one button works it’s way up the dom hierarchy when it is looking for microdata to set the +snippets information for sharing (Jenny Murphy said this at Google+ +1 Button Snippet+ Problem ). Also, the documentation on the +Snippets site from google at https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/+1button/#plus-snippet states “If the page is annotated with schema.org microdata, the +Snippet will use the name, image, and description properties found on any schema.org type”. However, it doesn’t appear that this is truly the case in some conditions.
We have a test page at http://www.magnetstreet.com/stores/html/weddings/testPage.html where it is demonstrating a very simple product page which has been marked up with schema.org microdata. This page passes w3c validation and its microdata is parsed properly in Googles rich snippets testing tool. However, when the +1 button is clicked and you proceed to share it, the api is clearly ignoring the itemprops set inside the product tag. This can be seen by how “page title” is displayed instead of “product title” which is the itemprop name.
Does anyone see any obvious issues with this code?
I would like to note, if we only have microdata properties set on the Product div and within (no itemscope or itemtypes on any outer elements), then the button works as expected. However, We have data on much more complex pages that need the other microdata, so removing all other microdata besides the product is not a solution.
There is an ongoing discussion I’m having with Jenny Murphy about this at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/google-plus-developers/MvuZtu8prTo . In short, currently the +1 button only looks at the outermost itemscope for the snippet information. If it doesn’t find it there, it stops parsing through microdata and instead looks for other ways to gather snippet info.
In the discussion I linked to, I’ve described why I think this can be a problem and am hoping to start some good dialog about it.