Re: Google Structured Data Testing Tool - improved support for multiple independent types

On 3/1/17 1:24 PM, Robb Shecter wrote:
> Martin Hepp wrote:
>> On 01 Mar 2017, at 01:57, Brian Tremblay wrote:
>>>
>>> On 2/10/17 7:07 PM, Robb Shecter wrote:
>>>> What's the relationship between the tool's understanding of
>>>> schema.org and the Google search engine's?
>>>
>>> Google only uses a few types. The ones I've seen used by Google
>>> include Person, Product, Review, and Recipe. There are probably a
>>> few others.
>>>
>>>> a deep (or new) subclass of Organization or LocalBusiness. If
>>>> the tool recognizes it, do you happen to know whether the
>>>> search engine will as well?
>
>> It's tempting but misleading to just check whether your markup has
>> an immediate visual effect.
>
> True. However, the uncertainty of the extent of schema.org support
> puts publishers in a difficult position.
>
> Imagine I have an Organization record for the State of Oregon's web
> page on my site oregonlaws.org.
>
> But now...I learn about the more specific...organization sub-type for
> my content: GovernmentOrganization....But this is a potential trap:
>
> Google's list of supported schema types do not include
> GovernmentOrganization. It's possible that the Google crawler will
> interpret the token GovernmentOrganization as a typing mistake or
> unknown type, and simply ignore it.

Right. That's the problem with being so far out front. schema.org is
busy creating new vocabs without considering whether anyone is consuming
those vocabs. We're left with increasingly specific (and complex)
markups that increase the cost of development with no appreciable,
verifiable benefit.

In this case, is there some benefit to labeling something
GovernmentOrganization instead of just Organization? I'd like to know
what that benefit is. To take another example, is anyone or anything
doing something meaningful (that is, something more than they do with
LocalBusiness or Restaurant) with IceCreamShop? Or BarOrPub? How about
CampingPitch or FireStation?

> There are probably other failure & semi-success modes I haven't
> thought of. So to me, one problem is that there's no native way, in
> json-ld, to identify a new & previously unknown subtype.

The problem is not limited to json-ld. It applies to microdata and rdfa
as well.

-- 
Brian Tremblay

Received on Wednesday, 1 March 2017 22:16:49 UTC