Should every page have Article schema, or only some?
- Published November 6, 2026
- Linked from 1 answer
- In a cluster of 7
Only some: the pages that really are articles, such as blog posts, guides, and news stories. Article markup describes a type of content, so on a product page, a category listing, a contact page, or a homepage it states something the page is not. Google’s structured data policies require markup to represent the page’s actual content, and a sitewide Article stamp breaks that rule on every page that is not an article.
What Article markup does for a real article
Google’s Article structured data documentation says there is no markup requirement for Google News features such as Top stories, but that “you can add Article to more explicitly tell Google what your content is about (for example, that it’s a news article, who the author is, or what the title of the article is).” Its value is clarity about the page, the author, and the dates, not a ranking lift.
The properties that make it useful are the ones that carry facts:
| Property | What to put there |
|---|---|
| <!–INLINECODE0–> | The article's actual title |
| <!–INLINECODE1–> with <!–INLINECODE2–> | The real author: a <!–INLINECODE3–>, or an <!–INLINECODE4–> when the organization wrote it, since Google's documentation accepts either; link it to a page that identifies the author, which Google describes as "A link to a web page that uniquely identifies the author of the article" |
| <!–INLINECODE5–>, <!–INLINECODE6–> | Dates that match what the page shows and change only when the content changes |
| <!–INLINECODE7–> | An image that appears in the article |
Article markup with an empty author, a person’s name invented for a page the organization wrote, extra details such as the publisher’s name packed into author.name (Google asks for the publisher in the publisher property), or a modified date that changes on every build adds no true fact to the page.
What to use on the other pages
| Page | Markup |
|---|---|
| Product page where a shopper can buy | Product, with offers that match the visible price and availability |
| Homepage | Organization, which Google says can help it understand your organization's details |
| Category or listing page | BreadcrumbList for the trail; no Article |
| Contact, thank-you, login pages | None needed |
How to apply it in practice
Tie Article markup to the template for posts and guides, not to the sitewide header. Then check one page of each template in the Rich Results Test and confirm that non-article templates output no Article block. For whether markup is worth adding at all on a given page, see when schema is worth adding versus a waste of effort. The short rule is to describe each page as what it is and nothing more.
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