What Is Person Schema Markup?
The type that describes a real individual rather than a business or a page. That changes what a mistake means here, because asserting a qualification somebody does not hold is not the same kind of error as a wrong opening time.
What It Asserts
A named individual, what they do, their qualifications and their other presences online. Every one of those is a factual claim about a real person rather than about a page or a company.
The name and role. Who they are here.
The individual and their position within the business. Straightforward, being the anchor everything else attaches to.
Qualifications and memberships. The consequential ones.
Degrees, professional registrations, memberships of governing bodies. These are claims about somebody's standing in their field, which is why blocks two and five treat them separately from everything else.
What they know about. Their areas.
The subjects the person genuinely works in. Modest and useful, provided it describes actual practice rather than aspiration.
Their other presences. Professional profiles.
Where the individual exists elsewhere professionally, which connects those to one person in the same way the organisation type connects a business.
Who this is describing. Somebody real.
That is the whole difference from every other type here. A wrong price affects a transaction. A wrong credential affects a person's professional standing, possibly their regulator's view of them too.
Which Makes Accuracy A Different Kind Of Duty
Asserting a credential somebody does not hold is a more serious matter than a wrong opening time. In regulated fields it could be a professional problem as well as a search one.
Why the stakes rise. Regulators care about titles.
Many professions restrict who may describe themselves in particular terms. A website asserting a protected description for somebody not entitled to it is making a claim their regulator would take an interest in.
Who the claim lands on. The individual.
A wrong price is the business's problem. A wrong credential attaches to a named person, who may not have written it, approved it or known it was there.
How it happens innocently. Drafting and drift.
Somebody writes a staff page generously. A membership lapses and nobody updates the site. A title gets simplified for readability and becomes a different claim from the one intended.
Why the markup makes it worse. It is stated rather than described.
Loose wording on a page can be read as marketing. The same claim in structured form is a definite assertion that this person holds that credential, which is harder to characterise as enthusiasm.
What follows. Somebody has to own it.
These claims need checking by the individual concerned rather than by whoever built the site. That is a different review from anything else in this section.
Where It Genuinely Matters
Professions where the individual is the product benefit most. Most sites never use this type and several kinds of business should.
The clearest cases. Regulated practice.
Surgeons, solicitors, therapists, architects and accountants. In each, somebody is choosing a person rather than a company. Registration with a governing body is the thing that matters.
Why registration is the point. It is checkable.
A registration number can be verified against a public register by anybody. That is a far stronger claim than a description of experience. Our trade guides argue for displaying it on exactly those grounds.
The other group. Named consultants and specialists.
Where the business is essentially one person's expertise, describing that person is describing the service. A generic company description misses what the customer is actually buying.
Where it adds little. Businesses selling a service rather than a person.
A plumbing firm, a shop or a manufacturer is chosen on the company. Describing individual staff is not wrong and it is not what the customer is assessing.
The pattern. Does the customer choose the person.
If somebody would ask who will be doing the work before booking, this type is worth using. If they would not, it is optional detail.
It Connects An Author To Their Work
Naming an author on an article states who wrote it. Describing that person separately turns the name into somebody checkable, which is where the two types meet.
What naming alone achieves. Attribution without detail.
A name on a page says a person wrote it. Whether that person plausibly knows the subject is left for the reader to establish, usually by searching.
What describing them adds. The answer to that question.
Their role, their field and their qualifications, stated where the attribution is made. The reader no longer has to go looking. Neither does anything else reading the page.
Why this matters for advice content. The obvious question.
Anybody reading guidance on a professional subject wonders who is speaking. Content on medical, legal or financial matters is read with that question in mind whether or not it is asked aloud.
What it does not do. Establish anything.
Connecting a name to a description does not make the description true or the person qualified. Block seven covers that, since it is the misunderstanding this pairing invites.
Where the other half sits. The article page.
Article markup covers the authorship property and why attributing everything to a company name is declining to make the claim.
Only Claim What Can Be Verified
Qualifications, memberships and registrations asserted here should be current and independently checkable. That is exactly what the accreditation pages across our trade guides argue for, arriving as a technical rule.
What independently checkable means. Somebody else holds the record.
A public register, a governing body's directory, an awarding institution. Not the business's own word, nor a certificate nobody can look up.
Why current matters as much as held. Memberships lapse.
A registration that was accurate when the site was built may have expired. The markup keeps asserting it. A lapsed claim is a false one even where it was true originally.
What to do about vaguer credentials. Describe rather than assert.
Experience, specialisms and areas of practice are real and are not verifiable claims. They belong in the prose rather than being dressed as formal qualifications.
The test before adding anything. Could somebody check it.
If a reader could confirm the claim against an independent source, it belongs here. If confirming it requires taking your word, it does not.
Who should review it. The person named.
Nobody else can confirm which memberships are current. That review belongs to the individual, annually rather than never.
Privacy Considerations
This markup makes an individual more findable. Not every employee wants that. It should be used for people whose professional profile is genuinely part of the business.
What being described does. Increases visibility.
A structured description makes somebody easier to identify, connect across sites and find deliberately. That is the purpose. It is not neutral for the person concerned.
Who is fine with it. People whose profile is the point.
A partner, a named consultant, a practitioner customers choose. Their professional visibility is part of how the business works and they already expect to be found.
Who may not be. Everybody else.
An administrator, a junior member of staff, somebody who joined to do a job rather than to become a public figure. Their name on a staff page is one thing and a structured profile is another.
The specific concerns people have. Legitimate ones.
Personal safety, previous harassment, family circumstances or simply preference. None of those needs explaining to an employer. Any of them is a reason to leave somebody out.
The rule we apply. Ask first.
Nobody gets described in structured form without agreeing to it. That is the only never rule in this section that protects the person being described rather than the reader.
It Does Not Confer Expertise
Describing somebody as an expert does not make them one. The markup follows the substance rather than creating it, which is the same correction the article page makes about authorship.
What the hope looks like. Description as qualification.
A business adds detailed descriptions of its people expecting the site to be treated as authoritative. Nothing about stating a field of knowledge produces standing in it.
Why the direction matters. Markup describes what exists.
Where somebody genuinely holds qualifications and does the work, describing that makes it findable and checkable. Where they do not, describing it makes a false claim findable and checkable.
What actually builds standing. The unglamorous things.
Qualifications earned, work done, writing that demonstrates understanding, recognition from people in the field. All of it exists whether or not any of it is described.
Why describing it is still worth doing. Verification.
Genuine expertise benefits from being checkable, since a reader can confirm it rather than taking it on trust. That is a real benefit and it is not the same as being granted credibility.
The version that backfires. Overstating.
An elaborate description of somebody with little behind it invites the comparison and fails it. The full series is on the schema and structured data guide. Organisation markup covers describing the business itself.
Could somebody
else check
it?
If confirming a credential requires taking your word, it does not belong in structured form. We assert only what a public register or governing body can verify, we ask the individual before describing them, then the person named reviews their own claims.
On every page we build:
A lapsed membership still asserted is a false claim, even where it was true originally.
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.
