Re: Things for Sale vs Reference Information

Yes, ProductModel is fine. In fact, in the inner mechanics of schema.org and GoodRelations, a product is actually any *thing* (abstract or physical) on which you could obtain some bundle of rights. The Ford model T, "banana" as a fruit, "yoga lessons", a hair from John Lennon, gold and silver, an the Empire State Building are all valid instances of ProductModel. We use the notion of product and product model in schema.org to bundle properties that are mostly relevant when this thing is exposed in a commercial context, but that is no requirement. Any book title is a valid product model for instance, even if it was the first Gutenberg bible or the Dead Sea Scrolls.

One key distinction that GoodRelations contributed was a clear separation of the thing (Product / ProductModel / Individual) on one hand and the offer to transfer some rights on that thing. 

As for the Google-related questions you are asking: First, this forum is not really a good place for questions regarding Google products. Second, the structured data testing tool is geared towards helping Web developers write data markup for specific use-cases in Google, e.g. rich snippets. But structured data is used for many more purposed by many more clients, e.g. for augmenting knowledge graphs etc. ProductModel without an offer will not create price snippets, but that does not invalidate the markup.

Hope that helps.

Best wishes
Martin Hepp


> On 5. Apr 2019, at 02:18, George Michaels <gdm@trovestar.com> wrote:
> 
> To be honest, I am not sure how http://wiki.goodrelations-vocabulary.org/Documentation/Conceptual_model is relevant for a website that is attempting to be a reference database (encyclopedia) rather than an e-commerce platform.
> 
> The ProductModel is supposedly used for product data, which seems the best fit.  But, imagine you are trying to describe the properties of an 1863 silver dime minted in San Francisco.  You are NOT trying to sell one, but rather you want to provide data about how many were made, who designed it, and what the metallurgical composition is.  Is ProductModel really the best fit?
> 
> And does anyone know why the Google Search Console is puking out messages that either "offers", "review", or aggregaterating should be specified when there is no such message coming out of the Structured Data Testing Tool?  The ProductModel at least should be immune to this....
> 
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 11:54 AM Martin Hepp <mfhepp@gmail.com> wrote:
> Short answer:
> Use Product or Service for the things.
> Use Offer for any statement to transfer or grant rights on the thing for a compensation (e.g. a monetary amount).
> 
> See also here:
> 
> http://wiki.goodrelations-vocabulary.org/Documentation/Conceptual_model
> 
> GoodRelations is the conceptual basis for the e-commerce part of schema.org.
> 
> You can (but don’t have to) be more precise wrt whether the thing is a single, identifiable item (like a particular iPhone with a certain serial number, as in an eBay auction), a bag of multiple identical products (like those on an Amazon offer), or the datasheetnor product model (e.g. on a manufacturer’s page).
> 
> See the subclasses of schema:Product for details.
> 
> Best wishes
> 
> Martin 
> ---------------------------------------
> martin hepp
> www:  http://www.heppnetz.de/
> email: mhepp@computer.org
> 
> 
> Am 11.03.2019 um 15:53 schrieb George Michaels <gdm@trovestar.com>:
> 
>> 
>>> Perhaps there is a standard answer to this question.  Perhaps there should be an additional field on Thing.
>>> 
>>> Some pages (eBay, Amazon) clearly describe things that are for sale.  Other pages, might be more akin to encyclopedia pages (wikis).  It seems to me that a Thing page should be able to describe itself as one or the other.  This can assist people by differentiating between searches for people looking to buy something vs people looking to learn more about something.  
>>> 
>>> In the world of financial securities, we differentiate the two types of data as being either “market data” or “security master data”.
>>> 
>>> Perhaps subclassing thing into thing-for-sale versus thing-description is the right way to go.  I assume someone has already given this some thought and can explain to me the accepted solution for differentiation.
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> 
>>> George
>>> 
>>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> George Michaels
> Founder, TroveStar LLC
> gdm@trovestar.com
> www.trovestar.com

Received on Friday, 5 April 2019 07:30:03 UTC