CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlschema.orgsemantic-markupmicrodata
Sunny
Sunny

Reputation: 2332

HTML5 and Schema.org, why use both?

Microdata with Schema.org already better describes any element than HTML5, it seems redundant? For example:

<nav itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/SiteNavigationElement">
    <!-- might as well just be... -->
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/SiteNavigationElement">

and

<article itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/NewsArticle">
    <!-- might as well just be... -->
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/NewsArticle">

Some elements create an "outline" for the webpage, but aside from that what's the point? Why not just use divs and forget about the semantic tags, and just use Microdata and Schema.org?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 2287

Answers (2)

Dan Brickley
Dan Brickley

Reputation: 531

The vast majority of terms that we have in schema.org have no overlap with HTML terminology, since they represent kinds of real world thing such as places, processes, products etc.

The problem area highlighted here is the small set of terms around http://schema.org/WebPageElement . I am not aware that any current search engine features make specific use of these, and I would suggest that any publishers who do see value in their use should also employ the corresponding pure HTML markup as well.

Upvotes: 1

net.uk.sweet
net.uk.sweet

Reputation: 12431

The schema.org definitions are specifically for applications such as search engines (From What is schema.org?):

This site provides a collection of schemas, i.e., html tags, that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search providers. Search engines including Bing, Google, Yahoo! and Yandex rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier for people to find the right web pages.

Your mark-up needs to be understood by browsers and screen-readers as well as search engines (from the schema.org Getting started page):

Usually, HTML tags tell the browser how to display the information included in the tag. For example, <h1>Avatar</h1> tells the browser to display the text string "Avatar" in a heading 1 format. However, the HTML tag doesn't give any information about what that text string means—"Avatar" could refer to the hugely successful 3D movie, or it could refer to a type of profile picture—and this can make it more difficult for search engines to intelligently display relevant content to a user.

So microdata allows you to add additional semantic meaning to your mark-up (using definitions provided by schema.org) which can be ignored by applications which don't need it, such as browsers, and read by applications which do, such as search engines.

Microdata is not a replacement for using the appropriate semantic-HTML tags where available, it should be used to augment that information. So the simple reason to use nav and article tags along with the microdata is that these tags have meaning to browsers and screen-readers, while the microdata does not.

Actually, your examples are fairly simplistic. I would suggest you have a look at some of the examples on the schema.org getting started page to see how microdata can be used more meaningfully.

To see microdata being used in practice, try googling yourself and inspecting the results. If I search for myself, the first three results (LinkedIn, github and my portfolio page) all display information marked up using microdata which google can pull from the pages and present to the user to help provide more meaningful search results.

Upvotes: 3

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