Google on occasion tells you which method of technology they prefer over others. They did it with mobile, saying go responsive over other methods. They did it was schema markup solutions, saying JSON-LD is preferred over other methods. But using a preferred method does not give you any benefit in Google Search than a non-preferred method.
John said this at the 4:36 mark into the video. He said that while Google has said JSON-LD is Google's preferred and recommended method for implementing schema, John said "that doesn't mean that there's any less value passed with with like the other types of markup." "I wouldn't say you need to do kind of Google's preference," he added.
Why does Google give a preference or recommendation? He said because if they do not, some won't implement it at all. He said people won't do anything if they do not give a recommendation.
Here is the video embedded in the right location:
Here is the transcript:
JSON-LD like that. My assumption is that's how most e-commerce sites do that, that they look up the database information, the pricing, the availability and they put that into markup in JSON-LD or microdata or whatever format.And I think the part with our preference there is mostly along the lines that oftentimes people externally just want like one preference. Like these are multiple options that you can do and we recommend using JSON-LD because it usually makes it easier for sites to implement. But that doesn't mean that there's any less value passed with with like the other types of markup. So if whatever feature you're looking for supports that type of markup and that's what you want to do then like go for it. I wouldn't say you need to do kind of Google's preference. Because usually people just come to us and say it's like oh you have two or three options which one is the best one, and if we just say oh I don't know just figure it out yourself then everyone's like oh I won't do anything. But if we say it's like oh we really like this option then it's a lot easier for them to say okay i'll just start.
Dan Brickley from Google added a bit more on this:
there is one practical difference - which is that Google tooling extracts and reports JSON-LD from HTML content that's generated/amended by Javascript.
— Dan Brickley (@danbri) May 25, 2021
Docs: https://t.co/ISotAbl1j0https://t.co/RWM5Ze4jjZ
/cc @JohnMu
Forum discussion at Twitter.
