A Practical Guide to Profile Page and Discussion Forum Markup
Markup for pages about a person or organization that creates content, and for forum and discussion threads, helping Google understand perspectives and first-hand content.
Samir Haddad
Where most projects go wrong
The usual mistakes:
- Forum markup on marketing pages
- Profile markup on pages not about a single creator
- Including removed or spam posts
- Mismatched authors between page and markup
What good looks like instead
- Mark up author profile pages with their content and links
- Use forum markup on thread pages, not index pages
- Include post dates and authors for each reply
- Keep markup in step with moderation changes
- Validate markup after forum software updates
Why it matters
Google introduced these types to better surface forum discussions and creator information, which matters for communities and sites with user contributions.
The specs that matter
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| ProfilePage | for pages focused on a single person or organization that creates content |
| DiscussionForumPosting | for threads of user-generated posts |
| Useful properties | author, datePublished, text and interactionStatistic |
| Q&A pages | question and answer pages use QAPage markup instead |
Knowing when to hand it over
Tip: Bring in help when running a community, forum or creator platform, or when author pages need a consistent structure.
Where this comes from
- Google Search Central — Profile page structured data
- Google Search Central — Discussion forum structured data
The figures and practices above come from the sources listed.
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Where to go next
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