There are three different types of structured data:
- JSON-LD
- RDFa
- Microdata
The advantages of JSON-LD is 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 take a look at the code. To do this, 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:
<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 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",or if you see this below, the code is in microdata:
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">or if you see this below, then the code is in RDFa:
<p vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="Person">If you’re still not sure, then this is an example of microdata – you could try searching for itemscope as that comes up a lot within this type of code:
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product">
<span itemprop="name">Panasonic White 60L Refrigerator</span>
<img src="panasonic-fridge-60l-white.jpg" alt="">
<div itemprop="aggregateRating"
itemscope 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>This is an example of RDFa (AKA Resource Description Framework in attributes) – you could try searching for typeof as that comes up a lot in this type of code:
<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?
You can just use a tool to check if there’s structured data on a page. Alternatively, you can also look yourself by using the methods outlined above.
