Article Structured Data

What Article structured data is and is not

Structured data is a block of machine-readable code that describes what is already visible on a page. Google’s documentation says Article markup helps it understand a page about a news, blog or sports article, and that it can influence what Google shows for the title text, images and date information in Search, Google News and Google Assistant.

The three allowed types are:

Google’s page does not describe any difference in how the three types are treated, so do not expect one. It lists all three as valid.

New to the topic? Start with the schema markup guide, then return here.

Map each property to something on your page

A good rule from Google’s general guidelines is that markup must describe what users can see. This map shows where each value should come from (the “on the page” column is my own way of applying that rule).

Each recommended property in detail

Dates: ISO 8601 and the timezone

Google asks for datePublished and dateModified in ISO 8601 format and recommends including the timezone. If you leave the timezone out, Google says it uses the timezone of Googlebot instead, which may not be yours.

Two practical points (my own, not from Google): keep datePublished fixed after publishing, and change dateModified only when you make a real, meaningful update. Changing it without changing content makes the markup less honest. Also note Google’s Rich Results Test does not warn you when datePublished or dateModified is missing, so check this yourself. Related: how to update old blog posts.

Images in the markup

• The image URL must be crawlable and indexable.
• It must match the content of the page and use a format Google supports.
• Do not use a logo or an image of a caption.
• Google recommends several high-resolution images of at least 50,000 pixels (width multiplied by height), in 16×9, 4×3 and 1×1 aspect ratios.

The arithmetic is simple. For example, 1200 x 675 is 810,000 pixels (16×9), 1200 x 900 is 1,080,000 (4×3) and 1200 x 1200 is 1,440,000 (1×1). All are far above the 50,000 minimum. These sizes are my own examples, not Google requirements.

Also read image SEO and image sitemaps. If your images sit behind a login or are blocked by robots.txt, Google cannot use them.

A full JSON-LD example

Replace every value with your own. The values must match what a reader sees.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "BlogPosting",
  "headline": "Your concise post title",
  "image": [
    "https://example.com/photos/16x9/post.jpg",
    "https://example.com/photos/4x3/post.jpg",
    "https://example.com/photos/1x1/post.jpg"
  ],
  "datePublished": "2026-11-10T08:00:00+06:00",
  "dateModified": "2026-11-12T09:30:00+06:00",
  "author": [
    {
      "@type": "Person",
      "name": "Jane Doe",
      "url": "https://example.com/authors/jane-doe/"
    },
    {
      "@type": "Person",
      "name": "John Roe",
      "url": "https://example.com/authors/john-roe/"
    }
  ]
}
</script>

Add it step by step

Notes for WordPress sites

• Check before adding. Look at your page source first (step 1). Plugin settings differ between sites, so do not assume what yours outputs. See Yoast SEO settings.
• One source of truth. Pick either your plugin or a hand-written block, not both (my own advice).
• Author pages. author.url needs a real page for the author to link to.
• Multi-part articles. Google says rel=canonical should point to each page or to a view-all page, not to page 1. See canonical tags.

Troubleshooting

A structured data manual action makes your markup ignored, though the page itself can still appear in Search. Check the manual actions report and the rules in structured data guidelines.

Pre-publish checklist

What Google’s page does not say

Google’s documentation does not give character limits for the headline (only that long ones may truncate), does not describe differences between the three types, and does not list publisher as a recommended property. It also does not guarantee any visible change. Anyone promising a fixed result from article markup is going beyond the source.

Key terms

JSON-LD

A script block that holds structured data separate from the visible HTML.

ISO 8601

The standard date and time format, for example 2026-11-10T08:00:00+06:00.

Rich Results Test

Google’s tool for checking whether markup is readable.

Recrawl

Googlebot visiting the page again to read changes.

Common mistakes

Related guides