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Are there any advantages/disadvantages in using a specific format for http://www.schema.org/Product? Something like "Searchengines understand Microdata better than JSON-LD"? I would like to use JSON-LD, because it doesn't mess-up with your html-code, but I'm not sure if it would be better concerning the searchengines to use Microdata.

Werner
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1 Answers1

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There is no general answer, it depends on the consumer of the data.

A specific consumer supports a specific set of syntaxes, and might or might not recommend a subset of these supported syntaxes.

Because search engines usually try to make sure not to get lead astray (e.g., a page about X claims via its Schema.org use to be about Y), it seems natural that they would prefer a syntax that couples the Schema.org metadata to the visible content of the page (in HTML5, this would be Microdata or RDFa); for the same reasons why many meta tags are dead for SEO.

However, this is not necessarily always the case. Google, for example, recommends the use of JSON-LD for a few of their features (bold emphasis mine):

  • Promote Critic Reviews:

    Though we strongly recommend using JSON-LD, Google can also read schema.org fields embedded in a web page with the microdata or RDFa standards.

  • Sitelinks Search Box:

    We recommend JSON-LD. Alternatively, you can use microdata.

Community
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unor
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  • Update: Google [now recommends](http://stackoverflow.com/a/38100293/1591669) JSON-LD for everything (except for the features that don’t support JSON-LD, which currently seems to be only the Breadcrumbs feature) – unor Jun 30 '16 at 23:44
  • Do you know what the other search engines prefer? Also what if you use two standards ie JSON-LD and Microdata, is this discouraged and why? – Bizmate Oct 14 '18 at 23:51
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    @Bizmate: I’m not up to date with what other search engines support or recommend. Regarding using multiple syntaxes: see [this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/41036600/1591669) (when describing the same item in both syntaxes) and [this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/50668874/1591669) (when describing some items in one syntax, some items in the other syntax). – unor Oct 15 '18 at 00:45