Microdata or RDFa

Which do search engines understand better?

[graeme_p]

Google say that schema.org uses microdata rather than RDF

[support.google.com ]

Then they provide examples that use RDFa and schema.org:

[support.google.com ]

I assume that the former is out of date, as most things I have read say was can use RDFa with schema.org.

Bing says it understands RDFa for everything except products and offers:

[bing.com ]

But its RDFa examples use data-vocabulary.org which are similar to, but not compatible with, schema.org.

So will Bing understand schema.org as RDFa at all?

[drhowarddrfine]

They all understand RDFa and Google has said they do in the documents I've read.

EDIT: Reading further down on your first link, they say you don't have to change to microformats and all search engines will continue to support all formats.

In your link, Bing even says they have no preference. Not that anyone uses Bing.

EDIT2: But notice they say they are focusing on just one format for schema.org but you don't need schema.org to make RDFa work and RDFa works with Google/Yahoo/Bing. That has its own naming scheme that is also well documented and probably better documented with more categories. It's also a web standard while schema.org is not.

[graeme_p]

Yes, they parse RDFa, and Google seem safe as they actually provide examples of schema.org as RDFa.

Bing is less clear: I cannot find any statement that they use/process (as opposed to parse) schema.org as RDFa.

I am going to do some testing, but test tools often reflect ability to parse rather than ability to use.