Dan Brickley, a developer advocate at Google who managed Schema.org, had a really great line that I wanted to amplify here. He was asked by a seasoned SEO about which schema one should use in a specific case. In which Dan Brickley replied "that question is a bit like asking a dictionary maintainer what to say."
He goes on to explain that it is "best to put most effort into documented tangible benefits, which for Google are mostly documented in." He then linked to Google's structured data gallery to provide examples.
The thing is, the person who asked is super seasoned on schema/structured data and the like - he is no newbie. So I think maybe the question was misinterpreted or misunderstood. But the response, nevertheless was pretty classic and I wanted to document it.
Here are those tweets:
That question is a bit like asking a dictionary maintainer what to say. It's best to put most effort into documented tangible benefits, which for Google are mostly documented in https://t.co/19uUaWG02k
— Dan Brickley (@danbri) April 28, 2021
Click through to see the back and forth conversation on Twitter.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
I'm wondering if we should make the dictionary metaphor more prominent. It may help explain the different kinds of validation too - e.g. checking JSON-LD for having a ',' in wrong place, vs checking if you're data's in the right shape to be eligible for some platform's features.
— Dan Brickley (@danbri) April 30, 2021
