Glossary

Overview

Schemas are the result of a recent collaboration between Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo with the goal of assisting search engines in reducing online ambiguity. Schema.org has a library of markup syntax that website owners can add to their HTML. Search engines will then be able to decipher this markup and use it to provide search engine users with more relevant results.

Example

Many search engines users struggle to find relevant search results due to the ambiguity of their search term. For example a search for “avatar” will return results for both the 2009 movie and for the graphical representation of a user on the internet. By marking up html with the following “microdata” search engines will understand that a webpage is about the movie.

<div itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/movie“></div>

Website owners can also add “itemprops” for more specific information.

Schemas and SEO

Schema Resources

Schema.org
Webmaster Tools
SEOmoz