Article Schema Generator

What this tool is used for

• Adding Article or BlogPosting markup to a post that has none.
• Producing the author and publisher properties a rich result expects.
• Getting the published and modified date formats correct.
• Producing consistent markup across a blog template.
• Comparing generated markup against an existing block.

Frequently Asked Questions

Article, NewsArticle or BlogPosting — which type?

`NewsArticle` for time-sensitive reporting, `BlogPosting` for a blog entry, `Article` for everything else. They are subtypes of the same thing and Google treats them near-identically, but `NewsArticle` is what Google News eligibility keys off, so it is not purely cosmetic.

Which properties are actually required?

`headline`, `image`, `datePublished` and `author` cover the required and strongly-recommended set. `headline` is capped at 110 characters — longer ones are truncated or the item is dropped — and `image` should be a real URL rather than a placeholder, because Google fetches it.

Does dateModified matter?

Yes, and honesty about it matters more. It is used to decide how fresh a result is, and setting it on every build without changing the content is the kind of signal that stops being trusted. Only update it when the article genuinely changed.

How should author be represented?

As a nested `Person` object with a `name`, and a `url` pointing at a real author page where one exists. A bare string works but carries less. Google's guidance is explicit that the author should be the actual person, not the publication — which has its own `publisher` property.

Does article markup produce a rich result?

Not a distinctive one for most sites — no stars, no accordion. What it produces is eligibility for the Top Stories carousel and a headline-and-date treatment in some contexts, plus a machine-readable description of the page that other consumers can use.

Common errors and gotchas

• Setting a modified date that is later than the visible change, which readers and crawlers both notice.
• Naming an author who does not appear on the page, which contradicts the visible content.
• Using a non-ISO date format, which the parser will not read.
• Marking a category or a tag page as an Article, which it is not.
• Omitting the image property, which most article rich results require.