Schema piece: Article

Describes an article on a page. Connects to WebPage (and in turn, the WebSite and Organization).

May be transformed into a more specific type (such as NewsArticle) if the required conditions are met.

Triggers

Should only be output on explicitly 'authored' pages. In the case of a standard WordPress setup, this is limited to native Posts.

Required properties

A valid Articlemust have the following properties.

• @id: The unmodified canonical URL of the parent WebPage, appended by #/schema/article/{{ID}}, where {{ID}} is a unique identifier for the article in question.
• headline: The headline of the article (falling back to the title of the WebPage).
• description: A summary of the article (falling back to the page's meta description content).
• isPartOf: A reference-by-ID to the WebPage node.
• mainEntityOfPage: A reference-by-ID to the WebPage node.
• datePublished: The time at which the article was originally published, in ISO 8601 format; e.g., 2015-10-31T16:10:29+00:00.
• dateModified: The time at which the article was last modified, in ISO 8601 format; e.g., 2015-10-31T16:10:29+00:00.
• author: A reference-by-ID to the author of the article.
• publisher: A reference-by-ID to the publisher of the article.
• image: An image object (or array of all images in the article content), referenced by ID.
  • Must be at least 696 pixels wide.
  • Must be of the following formats+file extensions: .jpg, .png, or .gif.

Failure scenarios

If any of the required fields are missing or invalid, the node should not be output.

If the node is not output, the parent WebPage node should be altered to reference the following properties by ID (when valid and present):

• author
• commentCount

Missing images

If the failure reason is due to the article missing an image, you may fall back to referencing one of the following by ID, providing they're valid candidates (in the following order of precedence):

• The image used in the primaryImageOfPage property of the parent WebPage.
• The first image in the image array attached to the parent WebPage.

If no suitable image is found, the node should fail (and adhere to the Failure scenarios).

Optional properties

The following should be added whenever available and valid:

• video: An array of all videos in the article content, referenced by ID.
• (when greater than 0).
• comment: An array of references by ID to comment pieces.
• articleSection: An array of the names of categories which the article belongs to (e.g., ["cats","dogs","cake"]).
• inLanguage: The language code for the article; e.g., en-GB.
• speakable: A SpeakableSpecification object which identifies any content elements suitable for spoken results.

Conditional properties

Optional properties which should only be output when the required criteria are met.

If copyright information is available

• copyrightYear: The year from which the article holds copyright status.
• copyrightHolder: A reference-by-ID to the Organization or Person who holds the copyright.

If there are comments

• commentCount: An integer value of the number of comments associated with the article.
• comment: An array of references-by-ID the comments associated with the article.
• potentialAction: A CommentAction object with values:
  • name: "Comment".
  • target: The url property of the parent WebPage, appended with #comment.

Transformations

The Article type may be transformed in the following scenarios:

• When explicitly nominated as a "news article", the type property should be altered to an array of [Article, NewsArticle].

Examples

Minimum criteria

{
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@graph": [
        {
            "@type": "Article",
            "@id": "https://www.example.com/blog/example-article/#/schema/article/abc123",
            "headline": "Example article headline",
            "description": "Example article description",
            "isPartOf": {
                "@id": "https://www.example.com/blog/example-article/"
            },
            "mainEntityOfPage": {
                "@id": "https://www.example.com/blog/example-article/"
            },
            "datePublished": "2019-07-10T08:08:40+00:00",
            "dateModified": "2019-07-10T08:43:03+00:00",
            "author": {
                "@id": "https://www.example.com/#/schema/person/abc123"
            },
            "publisher": {
                "@id": "https://www.example.com/#/schema/organization/abc123"
            },
            "image": {
                "@id": "https://www.example.com/#/schema/image/abc123"
            }
        }
    ]
}

Extended criteria

{
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@graph": [
        {
            "@type": "Article",
            "@id": "https://www.example.com/blog/example-article/#/schema/article/abc123",
            "headline": "Example article headline",
            "description": "Example article description",
            "isPartOf": {
                "@id": "https://www.example.com/blog/example-article/"
            },
            "mainEntityOfPage": {
                "@id": "https://www.example.com/blog/example-article/"
            },
            "datePublished": "2019-07-10T08:08:40+00:00",
            "dateModified": "2019-07-10T08:43:03+00:00",
            "commentCount": 6,
            "articleSection": "Cats,Dogs,Recipes",
            "inLanguage": "en-US",
            "author": {
                "@id": "https://www.example.com/#/schema/person/abc123"
            },
            "publisher": {
                "@id": "https://www.example.com/#/schema/organization/abc123"
            },
            "image": [
                {
                    "@id": "https://www.example.com/#/schema/image/abc123"
                },
                {
                    "@id": "https://www.example.com/#/schema/image/def456"
                }
            ],
            "video": [
                {
                    "@id": "https://www.example.com/#/schema/video/abc123"
                },
                {
                    "@id": "https://www.example.com/#/schema/video/def456"
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}