TLDR; There are 3 formats of structured data. Google uses JSON-LD, so that’s the one we recommend to use. You can use Classy Schema to find which structured data formats are being used on a page.
There are three different formats (languages) of structured data:
-
- JSON-LD
- RDFa
- Microdata
The advantages of JSON-LD are that it’s “invisible” to the user and can only be read by search engines, it doesn’t mess up the rest of your code, and it’s much easier to implement than RDFa or Microdata.
Most sites nowadays use JSON-LD and that’s also the type of structured data that Google recommends, however it does still support all three types, as stated in the documentation:
Google Search supports structured data in the following formats, unless documented otherwise. In general, we recommend using a format that’s easiest for you to implement and maintain (in most cases, that’s JSON-LD); all 3 formats are equally fine for Google, as long as the markup is valid and properly implemented per the feature’s documentation.
Google’s Documentation
We’ll be concentrating on JSON-LD (AKA JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) type on this website, as that’s the one that Google recommends using.
How do you identify which type of structured data is being used?
To identify which type of structured data is on a page, you can either take a look at the code or use a tool.
If you want to look at the code, you can open Inspect in Chrome by right-clicking any part of a webpage and click Inspect > Inspect Element.
Alternatively, you can press:
Command+Option+i on your Mac
F12 on your PC
CTRL + Shift + i on your PC
Start by searching the code for this (by pressing Ctrl + F on your PC) and entering this in the search box:
<script type="application/ld+json">or alternatively, you can search for this (if the website is on WordPress and using Yoast SEO):
<script type="application/ld+json" class="yoast-schema-graph">If you find either of these, then the site is using JSON-LD structured data code.
If you can’t find this, then it’s unlikely that the website is using JSON-LD code. However, some websites can’t use the opening and closing <script> tags within the <head> section of the site as they conflict with other scripts, so they have to remove them. In this case, you can search for the word schema, as we are hoping to see this if it’s JSON-LD:
"@context":"https://schema.org",If you can’t find any of the above, it could be that there’s no structured data on the page or it could be using Microdata or RDFa. Do another search, and this time enter itemprop or itemtype
which if you can find code that looks like this:
<div itemtype=”http://schema.org/Product”><span itemprop=”name”>Panasonic White 60L Refrigerator</span><img src=”panasonic-fridge-60l-white.jpg” alt=””><div itemprop=”aggregateRating” itemtype=”http://schema.org/AggregateRating”><meter itemprop=”ratingValue” min=0 value=3.5 max=5>Rated 3.5/5</meter> (based on <span itemprop=”reviewCount”>11</span> customer reviews)</div></div>
means that the site is using Microdata.
If you can’t find any microdata, then search next for:
typeofwhich is commonly used in RDFa (AKA Resource Description Framework in attributes), the full code looks similar to this:
<p vocab=”http://schema.org/” typeof=”Person”> My name is <span property=”name”>Kelly Sheppard/span> and you can give me a ring via <span property=”telephone”>1-800-555-0199</span> or visit <a property=”url” href=”https://www.mywebsite.org/”>my homepage</a>.</p>
How to check if there’s structured data on a page with a tool?
You can just use a tool such as Classy Schema to check if there’s structured data on a page:
Click the Fetch from URL button along the top, and then wait for it to render.
It will tell you the structured data formats that have been found on the page.
In this example, you can see that there is both JSON-LD and Microdata on the page.
