: Schema.org Microdata Across Multiple Pages Say I have markup like this on https://example.org/index.html: <span itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/LocalBusiness"> <meta itemprop="url"
Say I have markup like this on example.org/index.html:
<span itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/LocalBusiness">
<meta itemprop="url" content="https://example.org/index.html">
<meta itemprop="name" content="Example Industries">
<span itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/PostalAddress">
<meta itemprop="addressCountry" content="CA">
<meta itemprop="addressRegion" content="ON">
<meta itemprop="addressLocality" content="Ottawa">
</span>
<meta itemprop="telephone" content="613-555-1234">
...
</span>
Then on example.org/employees/joe-blow.html I have
<span itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person">
<meta itemprop="url" content="https://example.org/employees/joe-blow.html">
<meta itemprop="givenName" content="Joe">
<meta itemprop="familyName" content="Blow">
<span itemprop="worksFor" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/LocalBusiness">
<meta itemprop="url" content="https://example.org/index.html">
<meta itemprop="name" content="Example Industries">
</span>
</span>
I obviously don't want to repeat all the information about the LocalBusiness within each Person. Is this a valid way for the Person to reference the LocalBusiness on another page?
I've also tried it like this:
example.org/index.html:
<span itemid="#business" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/LocalBusiness">
<meta itemprop="url" content="https://example.org/index.html">
<meta itemprop="name" content="Example Industries">
<span itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/PostalAddress">
<meta itemprop="addressCountry" content="CA">
<meta itemprop="addressRegion" content="ON">
<meta itemprop="addressLocality" content="Ottawa">
</span>
<meta itemprop="telephone" content="613-555-1234">
...
</span>
example.org/employees/joe-blow.html:
<span itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person">
<meta itemprop="url" content="https://example.org/employees/joe-blow.html">
<meta itemprop="givenName" content="Joe">
<meta itemprop="familyName" content="Blow">
<link itemprop="worksFor" href="https://example.org/#business">
</span>
But Google's validator doesn't seem to recognize the linked information. It complained unless I re-included the name property of the LocalBusiness.
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How to reference/link with Microdata and Schema.org
If possible, I would use both ways (url property from Schema.org & itemid attribute from Microdata).
While Schema.org isn’t that strict about it, I think it makes sense to use different URIs for them, if you want to differentiate between the page and the thing:
Schema.org’s url property gives the URI of the page about the thing.
Microdata’s itemid attribute gives the URI of the thing.
For example, the URI example.org/employees/joe-blow.html points to a page about Joe Blow, and the URI example.org/employees/joe-blow.html#i is the URI for Joe Blow himself. Then you could specify:
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" itemid="/employees/joe-blow.html#i">
<link itemprop="url" href="/employees/joe-blow.html" />
</div>
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/AboutPage" itemid="/employees/joe-blow.html">
<link itemprop="about mainEntity" href="/employees/joe-blow.html#i" />
<!-- just for the sake of the example; you would typically include the 'Person' item here -->
</div>
Search engine support
Google’s SDTT doesn’t follow links. Copying my comment to a related question:
The SDTT doesn’t support it, but of course that doesn’t necessarily mean that Google doesn’t support it. I guess it makes sense that the tool doesn’t follow references, because there could be many, possibly endless, even to external documents. -- My guess (I have no evidence, just a guess) is that the Googlebot will follow those references (these are, after all, normal a/area/link hyperlinks), but without "adding" the structured data from the linked page to the linking page.
As far as I know, no search engine documents that they would follow references in structured data to do something with it.
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