2 January 2020

In The Schema Things: An essential guide to Schema for your website: Part 3

In this instalment of our blog series, In The Schema Things, we will be focusing on schema for online publishers. Online publishers are constantly creating and posting content online, with the hope of reaching a large audience. For this reason, it is integral that publishers use all tools available to aid the promotion of their content.

It is particularly important that this content is visible in organic search, whether that be in the News results or in the reviews section of a knowledge panel. This blog explores the different types of schema that publishers can use to communicate the intent of their content to search engines so that it can gain the best search visibility.

Article Schema Markup

What is Article Schema Markup?

The Article Schema Markup is a parent schema encompassing several Article schema types; Article, NewsArticle and BlogPosting. Where possible, we would recommend using NewsArticle for news articles from online publishers and BlogPosting for blog articles. The generic Article schema can be used for any articles that do not fit into either of the other two type descriptions. Adding article schema such as NewsArticle schema does not guarantee that your article will be added to search engine news results, however we would recommend implementing the markup to aid Search Engines to recognise your article as a news article.

There is a long list of properties that you can add to Article schema to help search engines to comprehend and categorise your article. These properties include trust signals such as Author and Publisher, as well as general information about the article such as a Headline, Image, date of publish etc.

What does Article Schema Markup look like?

In some cases where NewsArticle schema is implemented, a search engine will include the article in the news results. An example of this can be seen below, where we can see that the Headline, Image, Publisher and Date have been included in an enhanced snippet.

What is the benefit of using Article Schema Markup?

Although adding Article Schema Markup does not guarantee that your article will be included in news results, the information you add helps search engines to better understand the context of your article and therefore show it for relevant searches. In some cases, adding the schema can help your article to be displayed as a rich result, enhancing the visual appearance of your article in SERPs and encouraging searcher engagement.

Fact Check Schema Markup

What is Fact Check Schema Markup?

Sometimes on a publishing site, there will be an article that reviews a claim that has been made by others. In this case, the webmaster should add ClaimReview structured data to this page to encourage search engines to display a Fact Check snippet in search results.

The required properties for ClaimReview schema are a summary of the claim, a review of the claim and a URL to the page that contains the full article. You can also add additional properties such as author and date of publish.

What does Fact Check Schema Markup look like?

Below is an example of Fact Check Markup added to an article, giving searchers an instant fact check before they read the rest of the article. The fact check snippets rarely show on desktop, but can be seen more frequently on mobile devices.

What is the benefit of using Fact Check Schema Markup?

Adding ClaimReview structured data to your page allows Google and other search engines to display a summary of your fact check on the results page. Again, adding the schema does not guarantee that the fact check snippet is shown, but it must be added for search engines to consider adding fact check to your result.

Critic Review Schema Markup

What is Critic Review Schema Markup?

Critic Review schema can be added to review articles about Local Businesses, Movies and Books. A snippet of the critic’s review will appear in the knowledge panel for the film, book or business, if selected by the search engine. Critic review schema has similar properties to the general review schema but is for reviews written by a recognised reviewing critics or websites rather than casual customer reviews.

What does Critic Review Schema Markup look like?

A critic review takes an excerpt from a review article and displays this with the critic’s name, publisher’s name and a link to the site where the full review article is published. The snippet provided in the schema must be less than or equal to 200 characters and should follow the schema guidelines for it’s content.

Below is an example of the critic reviews being included in the knowledge panel for a film.

What are the benefits of using Critic Review Schema Markup?

Marking your reviews with Critic Review schema gives you the chance to get your review included in a knowledge panel, linking through to the full article on your website. The placement of this review helps to promote trustworthiness of your site to searchers as it has been selected and displayed in a prominent position on the SERPs.

Key Takeaways:

• There are 3 types of article schema for online publishers; Article, NewsArticle and BlogPosting.
• Adding Article schema markup to your site indicates the type of content to search engines so that they are able to include the article in news results.
• Adding any Article, Fact Check or Critic Review schema to your site does not guarantee that search engines will enhance the display of your site in the SERPs.
• ClaimReview schema markup allows you to fact check statements made in your online articles.
• Critic Review schema markup can be added to articles reviewing Books, Films and Local Businesses.
• Critic Reviews are displayed in the knowledge panel with the Critic’s name, Publisher’s name and a link to the full article.

We hope you have enjoyed our third blog in our ‘In The Schema Things’ series, focusing on schema for online Publishers. Our next instalment of the series will be looking at Schema for Local Businesses.