If you’ve ever used schema markup, you know how important it is for SEO and Google’s semantic web. Schema.org has just released version 9.0, in which it has made some changes and fixed some bugs.
What’s included in schema 9.0?
Product type now has size and pattern variables. You can also indicate CreativeWorks that are oriented towards:
- Learning
- Education
- Skill acquisition
- Other educational purposes
Quizzes are now a type of LearningResource, defined as “test of knowledge, skills and abilities”.
Sailing plays a major part in schema 9.0 too, with BoatTerminal types, BoatReservation and BoatTrip. These are pending implementation feedback.
What is schema.org?
Founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex, schema is a shared vocabulary developed through an open community process. It covers entities and actions, and the structured data is used by over 10 million websites.
Schema markup is used for businesses, events, people, products, recipes, reviews and videos. It creates an enhanced description and provides context to otherwise ambiguous web pages by telling search engines what your content means. Schema.org explains it like this:
“Most webmasters are familiar with HTML tags on their pages. 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.”
Websites using schema markup rank better than those without. While it’s not clear if this is down to markup alone, there is correlation.
