Has MicroFormat HEntry

Abstract illustration of a legacy hentry microformat class marking an article card, in RankGear indigo and coral.

The Has MicroFormat HEntry factor checks whether a page’s body HTML carries the legacy hentry MicroFormat class used for an hAtom entry, returning 1 when the exact string class="hentry" is present and 0 when it is not. Presence relates to a page appearing within a measured result set — it is an observation about legacy markup, not a cause of ranking.

Factor IDRG-SCF-010
FamilyStructured Data – MicroFormat
MeasurementBinary presence (0 / 1)
Measured zoneBody HTML without scripts

What it measures

This factor detects the legacy hentry MicroFormat class, the class used to mark up an hAtom entry. hAtom was an early Microformats pattern for describing episodic, blog-style content, and hentry was its root class for a single entry. The factor records only whether that class string appears in the page body — nothing about the surrounding content or its validity.

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How RankGear measures it

RankGear returns 1 when a case-insensitive search of the body HTML (scripts excluded) finds the exact string class="hentry"; otherwise it returns 0. The match is on that single-class formatting as written, so the detector is looking for the literal attribute value rather than parsing or validating the microformat.

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What RankGear looks for

<article class="hentry">
  <h1 class="entry-title">Post title</h1>
  <div class="entry-content">…</div>
</article>

// Detector: case-insensitive match on the literal string  class="hentry"
ValueMeaning
1The body HTML contains the exact string class="hentry".
0No class="hentry" string is present in the measured body HTML.
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How to optimize it

Treat this as an observation about legacy markup, not a target to chase. Keep hentry only when a legacy publishing or syndication workflow still consumes valid hAtom markup; if nothing downstream reads it, adding it serves no purpose. Because the detector matches the exact single-class formatting, a valid but differently formatted attribute will not register — another reason not to retrofit obsolete markup just to flip the value.

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Important considerations

  • Exact single-class formatting is required by the detector — it matches the literal string class="hentry".
  • It does not validate entry-title, author, or publication properties; presence of the class alone drives the value.
  • Modern Microformats2 uses h-entry instead of the legacy hentry class.
  • Avoid adding obsolete markup without a use case.
  • Correlation is not causation: this value tracks whether legacy hAtom markup is present within a measured result set. It does not make a page rank or guarantee a position.
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Related factors

Part of the Factors reference · how RankGear measures · glossary.

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