Google has updated its discussion forum structured data help documentation to clarify that SocialMediaPosting markup is also supported. Google did say that SocialMediaPosting should be used for sites that are more of a "generic social media platform," versus a discussion forum.
Google wrote, that they are now confirmed "that SocialMediaPosting markup is also supported and allow only image or video in comments without text."
Google added that they made this change to "more accurately reflect how the data ingestion for these features work and to remove noise in validation reports."
The updates to the document include these additions:
- If your site is more like a generic social media platform, you can use SocialMediaPosting, which is the parent type of DiscussionForumPosting, with the same requirements.
- A social media platform where users can post and reply to comments or media
- While Google supports SocialMediaPosting markup, the requirements are the same and most websites (specifically forums) will find DiscussionForumPosting more appropriate. So in this section, we use DiscussionForumPosting in the descriptions.
- The title of the post. If there isn't a separate title, don't duplicate or truncate the text into a headline. This is not recommended for a SocialMediaPosting.
Google also added this to the comments section of the required properties:
Forum discussion at X.
