What Is Article Schema Markup?
The type we use most, on every guide across this site including this one. The part worth understanding beyond the basics is authorship, because naming who wrote something is a claim. Declining to name anybody is also a claim.
What It Asserts
Headline, author, the dates it was published and revised, who published it and what it is about. Each of those is a claim about the page rather than a description of its layout.
The headline. What the page is called.
Stated separately from the visible title, which is why they can differ and should not. Block five covers that mismatch, since it is common and pointless.
The author. Who wrote it.
A person, an organisation, else nothing at all. Which of those you choose says more than most people realise. Block two is about exactly that.
The dates. Published and revised.
Two separate statements: when this first appeared and when it was last genuinely changed. Block three explains why the second one carries a conduct question with it.
The publisher. Whose site this is.
The organisation behind the page, distinct from whoever wrote it. On most business sites these differ, since a named person writes and the company publishes.
What it is about. The subject.
What the article concerns, which lets something reading it place the page without inferring from the text. Modest and genuinely useful.
The Author Property Is The Interesting One
Naming an author asserts who wrote the page. A site attributing everything to a company name is not being neutral about that. It is declining to make the claim.
What naming somebody does. Makes it checkable.
A named person can be looked up. Their qualifications, their history and whether they plausibly know the subject all become verifiable, which is the whole value.
What attributing to a company does. Removes that.
A company name is not a person and cannot have written anything. The attribution is technically permitted and it answers a different question from the one asked.
Why that choice is visible. It looks like a choice.
Where every page on a site is attributed to the business, anybody paying attention notices that nobody will put their name to it. That reads differently from a named author, particularly on advice.
Where this matters most. Regulated and expert fields.
Medical, legal, financial and technical subjects are the ones where a reader most wants to know who is speaking. Our trade guides make that argument repeatedly. This markup is where it becomes an assertion.
What naming somebody commits you to. Being right.
An attributed page carries somebody's name against its claims, which is a reason to check them. That accountability is the benefit rather than a side effect.
Where the person is described. Separately.
Naming an author connects to a fuller description of that individual, which person markup covers.
Dates Matter More Than People Expect
The published date says when a page first appeared. The modified date says when it was genuinely changed. Using the second to look current without changing anything is a small deceit and an easily detected one.
What each is for. Origin and currency.
One tells a reader how old the piece is. The other tells them whether it has been kept up. Both are useful and they answer different questions.
What people do with the second. Touch it.
Updating the modified date without altering the content, so the page looks maintained. That asserts a revision that did not happen, which is a false statement of exactly the kind this section refuses.
Why it is easily detected. The page can be compared.
Previous versions of pages are widely archived. A page claiming revision while being identical to its earlier self is checkable by anybody who cares to, which makes this a poor gamble as well as a deceitful one.
What counts as a genuine change. Something a reader would notice.
Correcting a fact, adding a section, rewriting an answer. Not fixing a comma, nor republishing unaltered.
The related question. Whether to show dates at all.
A visible date helps a reader judge currency and dates the page as it ages. Our blogging material covers that trade. The markup question is separate from the display one.
Which Article Type
Narrower types exist beneath the general one. Choosing accurately is better than choosing the most impressive. The news types in particular should not be used for content that is not news.
What the narrower types are for. Genuinely different content.
Some describe reporting, some describe technical or scholarly writing, some describe opinion. Each was added because that kind of writing has properties the general type does not capture.
Why people choose wrongly. One sounds better.
A news type sounds more consequential than a general article. Selecting it for an evergreen guide is a false description. It also invites treatment appropriate to something time-sensitive.
What that treatment involves. Expectations about age.
Content described as news is understood to be about something recent. An explanatory guide described that way is asserting a currency it does not have and will age badly by its own description.
What most business content is. The general type.
Guides, explanations and evergreen answers are articles rather than anything narrower. Using the general type accurately is the correct answer and it feels like an underuse.
The exception worth knowing. Genuine reporting.
A business genuinely publishing news about its sector, dated and time-sensitive, may accurately use a news type. That is rare among the businesses we work with.
It Must Match The Page
The headline in the markup should be the headline on the page. Mismatches between the two are common, pointless and slightly revealing.
How the mismatch happens. Two people, two fields.
Somebody writes the visible title and something else populates the markup from a different field, frequently an older one. Neither knows about the other and the page now states two names for itself.
Why it is pointless. No benefit either way.
Nothing is gained by the markup carrying a different headline. Where the two differ it is almost always accident rather than strategy, which is why it is worth simply checking.
The version that is not accidental. Keyword-loaded headlines.
A markup headline stuffed with terms the visible title does not use is a deliberate mismatch. That is asserting the page is called something it is not, for a benefit that does not exist.
What else should match. Everything.
The author named should be the person who wrote it. The dates should be real. The subject should be what the page covers. Each is the same rule applied to a different property.
How to check. Read them side by side.
Compare what the markup says against what the page shows, once, on a representative page of each kind. Templates rather than individual pages are usually the source of any mismatch.
What We Do On Every Page
Every informational page we build carries this type alongside questions and breadcrumb descriptions. That is fixed rather than optional. You can verify it on the page you are reading.
The three that always appear. A locked set.
An article description, a description of the questions section, then a description of where the page sits in the site's structure. FAQ markup and breadcrumb markup cover the other two.
Our author convention. A named person, consistently.
Every guide is attributed to Andrew Odgers, Managing Director, who is described as a person rather than as a company. That is the same claim block two recommends, applied to ourselves.
Why consistency rather than variety. One accountable author.
Attributing everything to one named individual concentrates the accountability rather than spreading it. Where a guide is wrong, there is a person whose name is on it.
Our date discipline. Modified means modified.
A revision date changes when the content genuinely changed. Reviewing a page and altering nothing does not produce a new date, which is the rule block three describes.
What we do not add. A narrower type.
Our guides are articles rather than news or scholarly writing, so they are described as articles. That is accurate and it looks less impressive than the alternative.
It Does Not Make You An Authority
Asserting authorship does not create expertise. The markup describes something rather than establishing it. The work still has to be done.
What the confusion looks like. Markup as credential.
A business adds an author description hoping the page will be treated as expert. Nothing about stating a name produces standing, any more than stating a rating produces customers who gave one.
Why it is the same category of error. Direction.
Markup follows reality rather than creating it. Expecting authorship markup to confer authority is expecting a label to change the thing it labels.
What actually establishes expertise. The usual things.
Qualifications somebody holds, work they have done, writing that demonstrates understanding. All of that exists whether or not it is described. The markup makes it findable.
Why the markup is still worth doing. It makes the claim checkable.
Where expertise exists, describing it lets somebody verify it. That is a genuine benefit and it is different from being granted credibility.
The uncomfortable version. It works against you if false.
Naming an author who plainly does not know the subject invites the comparison. Anonymity would have been safer. The full series is on the schema and structured data guide.
Somebody should
put their name
to it.
Attributing every page to a company name is declining to say who wrote it. Readers notice. Every guide on this site carries a named author who can be looked up, plus a revision date that only changes when the content genuinely changed.
On every page we build:
Reviewing a page and changing nothing does not earn a new date.
Every guide.
One practice.
What structured data is, which types apply to your business, how to test it, where the results features come from and what to do when nothing appears.
