If you don't already know what Google Rich Snippets or schema.org are, this post is probably not for you.

Google Rich Snippets are not deprecated! The schema.org FAQ states, "If you have already done markup and it is already being used by Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo!, the markup format will continue to be supported. Changing to the new markup format could be helpful over time because you will be switching to a standard that is accepted across all three companies, but you don't have to do it."

This guide is for people who want to do it anyway.

Disclaimer: despite my working for Google, this guide has no official status. It represents nothing beyond my own personal interpretation, based on my experience writing about microdata and Google Rich Snippets in my free HTML5 book which you should totally pay money for because this is the way I want the world to work.

Some notes:

• Google Rich Snippets supported microdata, microformats, and RDFa. Schema.org only supports microdata. If you've been using microformats or RDFa to mark up your Google Rich Snippets, sorry, you backed the wrong horse.
• Microdata is valid HTML5. Take two seconds to upgrade your DOCTYPE and get on with your life.
• The official mailing list is your best bet if you have questions. My blog is where good feedback goes to die.
• There is currently no way of verifying that this metadata, once migrated, will be interpreted correctly by search engines. i.e. There is no schema.org testing tool or validator. Somebody should get on that.

Table of Contents

• Address changes
• Geo changes
• Organization changes
• Person changes
• Event changes
• Product changes
• Review changes
• Offer changes

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Address changes

http://www.data-vocabulary.org/Address is now http://schema.org/PostalAddress. Some properties have new names.

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Geo changes

http://www.data-vocabulary.org/Geo is now http://schema.org/GeoCoordinates. There are no changes to property names or semantics.

Several properties in the old data-vocabulary.org schema were of type http://data-vocabulary.org/Geo. In the schema.org vocabulary, many of these now use a location property of type Place. The new Place schema contains a geo property of type GeoCoordinates.

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Organization changes

http://www.data-vocabulary.org/Organization is now http://schema.org/Organization. The new schema has a number of more specific types like Corporation, NGO, and SportsTeam. Use the most specific type that is appropriate.

Some properties have new names or are expressed in different ways.

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Person changes

http://www.data-vocabulary.org/Person is now http://schema.org/Person. Some properties have new names or are expressed in different ways.

In addition, the affiliation used to be a plain text property. It now takes an Organization. (See also: Organization changes)

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Event changes

http://data-vocabulary.org/Event is now http://schema.org/Event. The new schema has a number of more specific types like BusinessEvent, SocialEvent, or Festival. Use the most specific type that is appropriate.

Some properties have new names or are expressed in different ways.

In addition, the location property used to be plain text or an Organization or an Address; now it must be either a Place or a PostalAddress. (See also: Address changes)

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Product changes

http://www.data-vocabulary.org/Product is now http://schema.org/Product. Some properties have new names or are expressed in different ways.

The brand property used to be plain text, but it now takes an Organization.

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Review changes

http://www.data-vocabulary.org/Review is now http://schema.org/Review. Some properties have new names or are expressed in different ways.

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Offer changes

http://www.data-vocabulary.org/Offer is now http://schema.org/Offer. Some properties have new names or are expressed in different ways.

The availability property used to be an enumerated attribute, but it now takes an ItemAvailability.

#rss #thinkofthechildren