I administer an educational site that includes a calendar of global events, but these are not "Events" in the sense that Schema.org's Event type considers them – they don't have a location, and they are observed across a wide area (e.g. a country, an continent, or worldwide). They are more like global anniversaries, occasions or observances. Examples include Earth Day, Chinese New Year, World Book Day, International Women's Day and so on.
In our initial attempt at introducing microdata for these calendar pages, I have used the Event type, but I'm aware that as many – or most – of these events don't have a definable location (in the sense that Schema.org represents a location), and are not "attended" in a physical or digital sense, they cannot be valid.
Is there a more appropriate type in the Schema.org vocabulary that I should use in this case? Is it inappropriate to try to represent them in Schema.org microdata at all?
Maybe Google's guide for an online event can help you, including an example:
<html>
<head>
<title>The Adventures of Kira and Morrison</title>
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"#context": "https://schema.org",
"#type": "Event",
"name": "The Adventures of Kira and Morrison",
"startDate": "2025-07-21T19:00:00-05:00",
"endDate": "2025-07-21T23:00-05:00",
"eventStatus": "https://schema.org/EventScheduled",
"eventAttendanceMode": "https://schema.org/OnlineEventAttendanceMode",
"location": {
"#type": "VirtualLocation",
"url": "https://operaonline.stream5.com/"
},
"image": [
"https://example.com/photos/1x1/photo.jpg",
"https://example.com/photos/4x3/photo.jpg",
"https://example.com/photos/16x9/photo.jpg"
],
"description": "The Adventures of Kira and Morrison is coming to Snickertown in a can't miss performance.",
"offers": {
"#type": "Offer",
"url": "https://www.example.com/event_offer/12345_201803180430",
"price": "30",
"priceCurrency": "USD",
"availability": "https://schema.org/InStock",
"validFrom": "2024-05-21T12:00"
},
"performer": {
"#type": "PerformingGroup",
"name": "Kira and Morrison"
},
"organizer": {
"#type": "Organization",
"name": "Kira and Morrison Music",
"url": "https://kiraandmorrisonmusic.com"
}
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
In addition, Schema has the beta version of the type VirtualLocation.
Related
I am trying to set up Schema.org on a website, but I have trouble understanding how to use the #id attribute.
I want to specify a Corporation and a WebSite. Here is the code without a reference between the two objects:
<script type="application/ld+json">
[{
"#context": "https://schema.org",
"#id": "https://www.example.com/#corporation",
"#type": "Corporation",
"name": "Company Name",
"legalName": "Company Name",
"description": "Company Description",
"url": "https://www.example.com",
"logo": "https://www.example.com/logo"
},
{
"#context": "https://schema.org",
"#type": "WebSite",
"name": "Example",
"url": "https://www.example.com"
}]]
</script>
The Schema.org validator finds both the Corporation and the WebSite. Google's Rich result test tool finds the logotype, as expected. Now, I want to add a reference to the Corporation as the publisher of the WebSite.
<script type="application/ld+json">
[{
"#context": "https://schema.org",
"#id": "https://www.example.com/#corporation",
"#type": "Corporation",
"name": "Company Name",
"legalName": "Company Name",
"description": "Company Description",
"url": "https://www.example.com",
"logo": "https://www.example.com/logo"
},
{
"#context": "https://schema.org",
"#type": "WebSite",
"name": "Example",
"url": "https://www.example.com",
"publisher": {
"#id": "https://www.example.com/#corporation"
}
}]]
</script>
The Schema.org validator now only shows the WebSite and has inlined the Corporation as publisher. The Google tool does not find any objects, but I was expecting it to still find the logotype.
I have spent quite some time with the Schema.org docs and searched the internet but I can't find an explanation to this behavior.
Am I doing it the wrong way? Thanks in advance.
At the moment logo is only shown in reports if it is in a top-level Organization entity. It is still recognised internally.
Google's logic sometimes ignores embedded entities.
I found a reference from Google on this. Point 2:
I can't for the life of me figure out how this company adding this meta data to their Google search.
Does anyone know how to add the data and booking links like the below image?
Thanks
What you are seeing in these search results is what Google defines as "Rich Results" more information can be viewed in Google's Structured Data documentation. Specifically Edgewater Medical center is taking advantage of the event functionality to define times and dates.
This can be verified by pasting the page's source in the Rich Results Test tool, results for this page can be viewed at
https://search.google.com/test/rich-results?utm_campaign=devsite&utm_medium=jsonld&utm_source=event&id=m1ZrUywePCZ_NglFJIjZfg
According to google documentation in order to make this happen you have to follow a few steps:
Ensure that Googlebot can crawl your event pages (meaning, your pages
aren't protected by a robots.txt file or robots meta tag).
Ensure that your server can handle increased crawl rate.
Make sure you follow the Google guidelines.
Add structured data to your event pages. Currently, the event experience on Google only supports pages that focus on a single event. We recommend focusing on adding markup to your event posting pages instead of pages that list schedules or multiple events.
An example of such "structured data" for a standard event is shown below:
<html>
<head>
<title>The Adventures of Kira and Morrison</title>
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"#context": "https://schema.org",
"#type": "Event",
"name": "The Adventures of Kira and Morrison",
"startDate": "2025-07-21T19:00-05:00",
"endDate": "2025-07-21T23:00-05:00",
"eventAttendanceMode": "https://schema.org/OfflineEventAttendanceMode",
"eventStatus": "https://schema.org/EventScheduled",
"location": {
"#type": "Place",
"name": "Snickerpark Stadium",
"address": {
"#type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "100 West Snickerpark Dr",
"addressLocality": "Snickertown",
"postalCode": "19019",
"addressRegion": "PA",
"addressCountry": "US"
}
},
"image": [
"https://example.com/photos/1x1/photo.jpg",
"https://example.com/photos/4x3/photo.jpg",
"https://example.com/photos/16x9/photo.jpg"
],
"description": "The Adventures of Kira and Morrison is coming to Snickertown in a can’t miss performance.",
"offers": {
"#type": "Offer",
"url": "https://www.example.com/event_offer/12345_201803180430",
"price": "30",
"priceCurrency": "USD",
"availability": "https://schema.org/InStock",
"validFrom": "2024-05-21T12:00"
},
"performer": {
"#type": "PerformingGroup",
"name": "Kira and Morrison"
},
"organizer": {
"#type": "Organization",
"name": "Kira and Morrison Music",
"url": "https://kiraandmorrisonmusic.com"
}
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
I have inline Schema.org code via itemprop attributes, on all event pages on a website.
Search Console is flagging up recommendations that I use performer and various other properties, however due to the nature of the events (they are races), there are no performers.
Does this imply that event is the wrong type of Schema.org here, or can the warnings be safely ignored?
The tags used are:
type
image
name
location
type
address
type
streetaddress
addresslocality
address country
type
name
aggregaterating
type
reviewcount
ratingvalue
The Event type is perfectly suitable for races. But you should use the more specific SportsEvent.
Schema.org never requires any property, but consumers (who offer features based on Schema.org structured data) have their own requirements. If you want to get the feature, you would have to comply; if you don’t want the feature (or you can’t get it because you can’t provide all the required data), you can simply ignore any kind of errors/warnings from this consumer.
The consumer Google Search offers the event rich result feature, which has required and recommended properties. The performer property is just recommended, so it should be possible to get the event rich result without providing a performer.
Note that the guide of Google for Event requires the use of the following property that are not in the markup scheme you specified: startDate.
There are also many recommended properties out there that you are missing and these lower the value of the rich results of Google in the SERP:
description
endDate
location.name
offers
Note that the property executor can have the embedded type PerformingGroup, e.g.:
"performer": {
"#type": "PerformingGroup",
"name": "McLaren"
}
This way you can create markup for the team but not for each rider.
More detailed markup with structured data enriches the SERP of your web pages.
Beeing a webdeveloper and racedirector, I have been looking into this for some time now. If you take a look at the races website (no, this is no advertising for the best race on the planet), you can see that I have an event (SportsEvent) and six different competitions on that very day: 100km ultramarathon
What you see here is what I assembled so far to make my race as machine readable as possible. I have the adress, the different competitions, the place, the entry fees and the offers, the dooring time and all the stuff I might need google to know.
The only thing that is missing is the list of the competitors, the runners of each race. I am doing research about how to do this right now, but "sports" in microformats seems to be a team based thing. If I found out how to do it right, I'll post an update here. And you'll see it in the websites source code of course.
I have copied the LD-JSON here for future reference in case I'd edit the code of the website.
FYI: I am getting the participants data as XML feed directly from the raceresult registration website.
<script type='application/ld+json'>
{
"#context": "http://schema.org",
"#type": "SportsEvent",
"#id": "https://whew100.de/wettbewerbe/whew100.html",
"name": "WHEW100 Ultramarathon",
"image": "https://whew100.de/assets/images/WHEW100_transparent.png",
"url": "https://whew100.de/wettbewerbe/whew100.html",
"description": "WHEW100 Ultramarathon in Wuppertal über Wülfrath, Velbert, Heiligenhaus, Essen, Hattingen und Sprockhövel. Auf alten Bahntrassen zwischen Wuppert und Ruhr.",
"startDate": "2019-05-04T07:00:00",
"endDate": "2019-05-04T22:00:00",
"doorTime": "2019-05-04T06:00:00",
"maximumAttendeeCapacity": "200",
"aggregateRating": {
"#type": "AggregateRating",
"ratingValue": "4.9",
"reviewCount": "84"
},
"location": {
"#type": "Place",
"name": "Utopiastadt",
"sameAs": "https://www.clownfisch.eu/utopia-stadt/bahnhof-mirke/",
"address": {
"#type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "Mirker Straße 48",
"addressLocality": "Wuppertal",
"postalCode": "42105",
"addressCountry": "Germany"
}
},
"competitor": [
],
"offers": {
"#type": "Offer",
"description": "Anmeldung zum WHEW100",
"url": "http://my.raceresult.com/105067/",
"price": "75",
"priceCurrency": "EUR",
"availability": "200",
"validFrom": "2018-09-01T00:00:00"
},
"superEvent": {
"#id": "https://whew100.de",
"name": "WHEW100",
"startDate": "2019-05-04T07:00:00",
"endDate": "2019-05-04T22:00:00",
"location": {
"#type": "Place",
"name": "Utopiastadt",
"sameAs": "https://www.clownfisch.eu/utopia-stadt/bahnhof-mirke/",
"address": {
"#type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "Mirker Straße 48",
"addressLocality": "Wuppertal",
"postalCode": "42105",
"addressCountry": "Germany"
}
}
}
}
</script>
I am building a web application for product comparison. The website has a structure like so:
http://example.com
http://example.com/fr/compare/
http://example.com/es/compare/
etc..
The main page is in English.
I want to insert Schema.org for each of the pages and I've construed this schema. Written in square brackets are what I intend to put as value later on.
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"#context": "http://schema.org",
"#id": "[canonical-url-for-specific-language]#webapp",
"#type": "WebApplication",
"name": "[Product Comparison Title in specific language]",
"url": "[canonica url for specific language]",
"applicationCategory": "Utility",
"applicationSubCategory": "Product Comparison",
"about": "[page-description]",
"browserRequirements": "Requires JavaScript. Requires HTML5.",
"softwareVersion": "1.0.0",
"screenshot": "[image-url]",
"inLanguage": "[language-code]",
"softwareHelp": {
"#type": "CreativeWork",
"url": "[link-to-how-to-page-for-specific-language]"
},
"operatingSystem": "All"
}
</script>
How can I construct this JSON-LD well to work for my specific website.
If you use structured data for a home page that has a language selector, then the markup can be similar to the following:
{
"#context": "https://schema.org",
"#id": "[canonical-url-for-specific-language]#webapp",
"#type": "WebApplication",
"name": "[Product Comparison Title in specific language]",
"url": "[canonica url for specific language]",
"applicationCategory": "Utility",
"applicationSubCategory": "Product Comparison",
"about": "[page-description]",
"browserRequirements": "Requires JavaScript. Requires HTML5.",
"softwareVersion": "1.0.0",
"screenshot": "[image-url]",
"inLanguage":[{
"#type": "Language",
"name": "English",
"alternateName": "en",
"additionalType":"https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php",
"sameAs":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language"
},
{
"#type": "Language",
"name": "Spanish",
"alternateName": "es",
"additionalType":"https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php",
"sameAs":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language"
}],
"softwareHelp": {
"#type": "CreativeWork",
"name":"Customer Service and Support",
"url": [
"https://examples.com/en/help.html",
"https://examples.com/es/help.html"
]
},
"operatingSystem": "All"
}
Note that I have here used for each language two identifiers with the properties sameAs and additionalType.
If the web page is with one particular language, then just delete the part of the markup for the unnecessary language and the square brackets.
Check out this markup on the Google testing tool and note that there are two warnings that are useful to fix.
From Schema.org PerformanceRole JSON-LD example:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"#context": "http://schema.org",
"#type": "Movie",
"name": "Ghostbusters",
"sameAs": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostbusters",
"actor": {
"#type": "PerformanceRole",
"actor": {
"#type": "Person",
"name": "Bill Murray"
},
"characterName": "Dr. Peter Venkman"
}
}
</script>
I can add a sameAs for each Person and thus have a reference/profile URL for each actor/actress involved with the movie.
Could I have the same for the Character performed by the actors?
In the example above Dr. Peter Venkman could have a link to something like this, a page with information specifically about that Character, regardless of the actor/actress interpreting him.
But, as far as I know, the characterName Property only accepts raw text.