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Adding Schema.org Mark Up

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22-September-2013 at 1:58am
Not sure how many folks beyond Lindsay & Art are following this, but I've been doing a tremendous amount of research on this and have a tool kit all worked up for it -- though not with pretty installation instructions yet.

I think it's running down the wrong path to look at any of this as "Schema.org Mark Up" (e.g. "itemscope/itemtype/itemprop" -- the Microdata markup)

This is all rather recently emerging, and I've spent a good deal of time bogged down in the tech debate regarding Structured Data/Semantic Web esp. regarding Microdata vs RDFa Lite. RDFa and RDFa Lite are now a true standard and the consensus of the W3C over Mircrodata (Schema.org is really more the current vocabulary -- over Data-Vocabulary.org -- and not really the syntax for marking up content, despite that it's still referencing Microdata markup). 

Here's a bombshell post on that from the point person on the W3C, Manu Sporny:
"Here’s the short answer for those of you that don’t have the time to read this entire blog post: Use RDFa Lite – it does everything important that Microdata does, it’s an official standard, and has the strongest deployment of the two."

Then a month ago:
"Microdata doesn’t have an active community supporting it. It never really did.... If you want to build a solution on a solid technology, with a solid community and solid implementations; RDFa is that solution."

Seems things are changing so quickly that the major contributors are out of date: Schema.org examples, Google Webmaster references, Bing tools & references, etc. 

Meanwhile Everyone else been chasing marking up their content for Microdata syntax because that's what the dated examples, references and sheep herd mentality are doing. I can't help but quote Sporny here:
"What I am saying is that if your customers want good search rankings, that you will use whatever technology will give you the best result. So, if Google makes it seem as if Microdata+schema.org is preferred, you will listen to their advice and implement it (because not doing so is going to be against your customer’s best interests)."

Perception is 9/10th of reality for most folks ... and with Microsoft/Yahoo!'s Bing validator, validating Microdata vs RDFa Lite clearly being biased towards Microdata in the tool -- despite that they've signed on as RDFa as the current standard for search.

So, that just makes this all so confusing for a merchant, let alone their SEO/SEM consultants as just a bunch of "egg head mumbo jumbo". Sporny is right, the herd will rush towards what they see in the examples, docs & tools (as they don't appreciate the tech). 

For this reason I've worked it up as both fully validated Mircrodata, validated on everything, AND as RDFa Lite, validated on everything but Bing's obviously lacking validator. When I release, I'll provide folks the choice of which way they want to go with a recommendation of the RDFa Lite version.

I hope this isn't all too techie mumbo jumbo, as I think is is now a seriously important discussion to have: First, implementing Structured Data, and what data to include; Second, which way to go (Microdata or RDFa Lite).


Edited by Sean@WMS - 22-September-2013 at 2:34am
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