RDFa, JSON-LD, Both, something else/neither?

[ids]

Looking for specific reasons and experience to choose on, both, or neither formats.

Scott

[ids]

I forgot I asked this. Well, at least we now know the fate of Rich Snippets?

[Matt Zimmermann]

Microdata and RDFa are conceptually similar: both syntax define attributes that get added to your existing HTML elements. JSON-LD is a syntax that gets added to a script element (used as data block, not as script), separately from your existing markup. So the primary difference between Microdata/RDFa and JSON-LD is that you have to repeat the content if using JSON-LD, while you can mark up your existing content if using Microdata/RDFa. RDFa and JSON-LD are both W3C Recommendations and both are RDF serializations.

Google's stated preference is for JSON-LD. It may be in your best interest to consider switching over to JSON-LD structured data if you currently use microdata. But at this time it's not actually necessary because Google can still read it and interpret it. But sometimes, it's best to future proof content. It's up to you at this time because Google isn't actually requiring one format over another.

You can include multiple structured data objects on a page, as long as they describe user-visible page content. However, if you mark up one item in a list you must mark up all items; marking up just one category entity from all listed on the page is against our guidelines.

Here is a good reference to using JSON-LD: https://moz.com/blog/json-ld-for-beginners

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Just thinking out loud here...but couldn't you build up the json object in pieces inline with the template segments that generate that data and then patch it together later on? I do something similar with basic micro data so that whole micro data 'chunk' sits at the bottom of the page. (I like clean html layout code :) )

[Matt Zimmermann]

If you went that route, you would have to wrap the page contents in a script tag which I think would cause problems with the page in general.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

hmm, i'm thinking that the individual json elements get stored in a miva variable and then reconstructed at the end.