Schema.org
Schema.org is a shared vocabulary of names for things on web pages, such as Product, Offer and price, used to write structured data.
What it means
Structured data needs agreed words, or every site would label its prices differently. Schema.org supplies them. It calls itself “a collaborative, community activity with a mission to create, maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on the Internet”. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex founded it.1
It works as a dictionary of types and properties. Product is a type, and name, gtin and offers are among its properties. Offer is another type, holding price, priceCurrency and availability.23 Google uses the vocabulary but says to treat its own documentation “as definitive for Google Search behavior”.4
It can say more than Google reads. A part can point to the products it fits with isAccessoryOrSparePartFor, defined as “A pointer to another product (or multiple products) for which this product is an accessory or spare part.”5
Think of it like this
It works like the standard symbols on a weather map. Every forecaster draws rain, wind and a cold front the same way, so anyone can read a map they have never seen before.
For example
Why it matters
Every supplier column has to land on the right schema.org property, because Google reads those names and ignores your column headers. Merchant Center pairs its own feed attributes with schema.org properties, such as title with name and id with sku.7
Not to be confused with
Sources
- schema.org. Schema.org.
- schema.org. Product.
- schema.org. Offer.
- Google Search Central. Introduction to structured data markup in Google Search.
- schema.org. isAccessoryOrSparePartFor.
- schema.org. ItemAvailability.
- Google Merchant Center Help. Supported structured data attributes and values.