Knowledge base v2.13.0 · Community edition · data through 2 October 2026
Topic · Structured data and media
Schema.org is the shared vocabulary that Google, Bing and Yahoo! announced in June 2011 so that every consumer reads markup the same way, and it is an open collaboration anyone can join. Google uses it as its markup language but mostly consumes only the subsets its developer documentation declares for its features, and very generic types say too little to be useful. Google said (not in its docs) that schema.org began publishing bucketed usage statistics for every type and property in 2026, also on GitHub, to help break a chicken-and-egg problem: Google often needs to see adoption before it builds a feature, which extends Day 1's advice to request features publicly and in volume. Schema.org also added RDF lists and sets for ordered values, and in the Google speaker's own tests LLMs asked to write schema.org markup often invent properties, get nested schemas wrong and duplicate content. Author’s view: markup for types Google does not use yet is a bet on future features, so check a type's usage bucket first. Day 3 tied schema.org to shopping: Google said product markup is a source of billions of product offers next to merchant feeds, and that it works to make what its shopping feeds and the Universal Commerce Protocol can express expressible in schema.org too. Schema.org version 30.1 (16 September 2026) added retail properties such as specification for Product and valueGroup for PropertyValue, but on 3 October 2026 Google's documentation did not cover them and Merchant Center help mapped only item_group_title to a schema.org property, so reading the new conversational attributes from markup rests on what was said at the event.
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In the speaker's own tests, even the latest LLMs asked to generate schema.org markup for a page often invent properties that do not exist, get deeply nested schemas such as complex pricing models wrong, and duplicate content across several fields.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-11
Schema.org is a common vocabulary that several major search engines started together so that site owners can mark up pages and every consumer interprets the markup the same way; the speaker put its start 15 to 20 years ago (Google, Bing and Yahoo! announced it in June 2011).
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Used byglossary term Schema.org
Schema.org is an open public collaboration, and the speaker invited people who enjoy ontologies and data to join it.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Marking something up with only a very generic schema.org type says little about it and is very hard for Google to use.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-03
Google uses schema.org as its markup vocabulary but mostly consumes only the subsets that its developer documentation declares, for the features it builds.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-03glossary term Schema.org
Schema.org, in which Google is a major participant, began publishing usage statistics for all its types and properties in 2026, showing in buckets how many domains use each one; the data is also in schema.org's GitHub repository.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Google often needs to see a markup type adopted on websites before it invests in a feature that uses it, a chicken-and-egg problem that the schema.org usage statistics are meant to help break.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Schema.org added support for RDF lists and sets, which give a way to express ordered values, because RDF triples are not ordered by nature.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Markup for schema.org types that Google does not use yet is a bet on future features; check a type's usage bucket on schema.org before investing, since adoption is what Google says it watches before building a feature.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.
Schema.org product markup on websites is another source of billions of product offers for Google Shopping, next to merchant feeds.
Speaker Alex JansenIn Day 3, 13:40 · Shopping on Search: Beyond the blue linksEvidence transcript
Most of the new conversational feed attributes were already available in schema.org, so Google ties them back to structured data and can use them from product markup as well as from feeds.
Speaker Alex JansenIn Day 3, 13:40 · Shopping on Search: Beyond the blue linksEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SHP-04
Product Q&A can be marked up in schema.org by linking Question items, each with an acceptedAnswer of type Answer, to the product through the subjectOf property, because the product is the subject of the Q&A.
Speaker Alex JansenIn Day 3, 13:40 · Shopping on Search: Beyond the blue linksEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SHP-04
Google works to make sure that what merchants can express in its shopping feeds can also be expressed in schema.org, adding vocabulary where schema.org lacks it, for example for product details.
Speaker Alex JansenIn Day 3, 13:40 · Shopping on Search: Beyond the blue linksEvidence transcript
Google named the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), next to the Merchant Center feed, as an industry standard whose capabilities it also wants schema.org to cover.
Speaker Alex JansenIn Day 3, 13:40 · Shopping on Search: Beyond the blue linksEvidence transcript
Used byglossary term Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)
A recent schema.org release added two properties, specification and valueGroup, so that the Merchant Center product detail attribute can be expressed in schema.org, with product specs nested under specification.
Speaker Alex JansenIn Day 3, 13:40 · Shopping on Search: Beyond the blue linksEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SHP-04
As of 3 October 2026 Google's Merchant Center help lists no schema.org property for question_and_answer, document_link, related_product, popularity_rank, variant_option or product_detail (only item_group_title maps, to ProductGroup.name), and Search Central does not document such markup: reading these attributes from schema.org is a stage statement, the feed is the documented route.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 3, 13:40 · Shopping on Search: Beyond the blue links
Used byrequirement DEV-SHP-04
Schema.org's release notes show version 30.1 (16 September 2026) added specification, isOftenBoughtWith and consumerNotice for Product, valueGroup for PropertyValue and itemPopularity for Offer as vocabulary for retail feed data; Google's Search Central docs did not yet document these properties on 3 October 2026.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 3, 13:40 · Shopping on Search: Beyond the blue links
Used byrequirement DEV-SHP-04
Google often needs to see a markup type adopted on websites before it invests in a feature that uses it, a chicken-and-egg problem that the schema.org usage statistics are meant to help break.
Google works to make sure that what merchants can express in its shopping feeds can also be expressed in schema.org, adding vocabulary where schema.org lacks it, for example for product details.
Google's structured data speaker said that in the months before the event Google added support for validity dates on sale prices in product structured data, so merchants no longer need to rush to remove a sale price when the sale ends for fear it shows wrongly in snippets.
Treat product Q&A and specification markup in schema.org as an extra on top of the feed
Rests on 6 claims, 5 of them in this topic
Choose the specific types Google documents for its features, and skip generic or irrelevant ones
Rests on 7 claims, 2 of them in this topic
Validate markup in the Rich Results Test before it reaches templates, and monitor it after release
Rests on 8 claims, 1 of them in this topic