The latest video that John Mueller of Google fielded was from @abhikasaudhan and it was a good one. Sadly, I am not sure John answered the specific question. The question was "if you need to use structured data exactly as specified in the Google developer documentation or if you can add more properties from schema.org?"
His answer basically said if you want to show up for the Google rich results, then yes, you should follow the Google developer docs to make sure you use the proper markup and follow the proper guidelines.
He also added that even if you do not show up for rich results you still may benefit a little because Google may understand your pages better. I think he is implying there that if you use schema.org in that case, it may help machines, like Google, understand your content better. So he is saying, I guess, you can use schema.org but the benefits are less obvious?
Here is the video, you watch it yourself:
Here is the transcript:
If you need to use structured data exactly as specified in the Google developer documentation or if you can add more properties from schema.org?Google uses structured data in search for both supporting rich results types as well as for better understanding the pages themselves. With that in mind, in order to be eligible to be shown as a rich result you need to make sure that the page uses the right structured data and that it complies with the appropriate policies on our site.
However, even without the structured data leading to rich results, our systems profit by understanding the page is better when they use structured data.
Also keep in mind that it's not guaranteed for us to show these rich results just because a page uses the appropriate structured data.
So in short if you're aiming to be eligible for specific rich results type in Google search, then you should definitely watch out for the requirements.
Independently you're always welcome to use structured data to provide better machine-readable context for your pages, which may not always result in visible changes but can still help our systems to show your pages for relevant queries.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Note: This story was pre-written before the Sukkot holiday. I am currently offline for the holiday and unable to respond to comments on this site, social, media or other platforms.
