Schema Products questions

[csdude55]

In a weak and somewhat confused attempt to make my site more schema-friendly...

1. Am I even correct that "Products" would be the most appropriate style for a Classifieds section?

2. I used this tool to check things:

[freetools.webmasterworld.com...]

In my layout I DID have a section for "url" in the page that listed all of the ads, like this:

<link itemprop="url" href="[LINK TO CLASSIFIED LISTING]">

So the link went to the page on my site with the actual ad. But the <link> element kinda messed things up because everything with the container div became a link.

The "Url" description on the generator is pretty vague; should I have even been linking to the classified listing like that? If so, is the <link> element appropriate, or should it have just been in the <a href...> link... like:

<a itemprop="url" href="[LINK TO CLASSIFIED LISTING]">
<b itemprop="name">[TITLE]</b>
</a>

[not2easy]

Sorry I'm not much help with this. When I started with setting it up I used that free tool for checking. Google has a free schema / Rich Snippets testing tool [search.google.com] that is a little newer.

[csdude55]

Man, schema is a nightmare! I don't think even it knows what it's doing.

I've found 100 tutorials, and all 100 of them say 100 different things. The best I can figure, though, for my list I have this type of format:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ItemList">
 <span itemprop="numberOfItems">315</span>

 <!-- first item -->
 <div itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem">
  <meta itemprop="position" content="1">
  <link itemprop="url" content="[LINK TO PRODUCT]">

  <div itemprop="item" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product">
   <img src="[LINK TO IMAGE]" itemprop="image">

   <a itemprop="url" href="[LINK TO PRODUCT]">
    <span itemprop="name">[TITLE]</span>
   </a>

   <div itemprop="offers" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Offer">
    <span itemprop="price">[PRICE]</span>
   </div>

   <p>
    <a itemprop="url" href="[LINK TO PRODUCT]">
     <b itemprop="name">[TITLE]</b>
    </a>
   </p>

   <p itemprop="description">
    [DESCRIPTION]
   </p>
  </div>
 </div>

 <!-- second item -->
 <div itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem">
  <meta itemprop="position" content="2">
  ...
 </div>
</div>

position was a pain to figure out, not having it at all gave an error, so I think I went through 50 variations before finding something that validated!

This validates, but I still get a warning that I don't understand:

@type Product
@id [shows the link to current page + the ID for the field, no idea why]
url [LINK TO PRODUCT]
name [TITLE]
description [DESCRIPTION]
offers
@type Offer
priceCurrency USD
price 100.00

[THIS IS THE UNEXPECTED WARNING]
warning - url The url field is recommended. Please provide a value if available.

I already have the URL that's validating, in the 3rd line. But this warning implies that there's a sub-listing beneath "offers" that should have the URL again?

I tried embedding the URL and NAME within another Offers set, like the example here:

[schema.org...]

Eg:

   <div itemprop="offers" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Offer">
    <span itemprop="price">[PRICE]</span>
   </div>

   <p itemprop="offers" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Offer">
    <a itemprop="url" href="[LINK TO PRODUCT]">
     <b itemprop="name">[TITLE]</b>
    </a>
   </p>

But then I got errors on NAME and PRICE, and still had the same warning for URL.

Am I supposed to have another link for URL within the Offer section? If so, is it supposed to link to the current page or product page?

[NickMNS]

If you use JSON-LD then you don't need to worry about matching all the schema markup with all right tags.

you simply add the markup like so:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
 "@context": "https://schema.org",
 "@type": "Organization",
 "url": "http://www.example.com",
 "name": "Unlimited Ball Bearings Corp.",
 "contactPoint": {
  "@type": "ContactPoint",
  "telephone": "[phone]",
  "contactType": "Customer service"
 }
}
</script>

example is from here:
[developers.google.com...]

Link includes a far more detailed description.

[csdude55]

I've never used JSON-LD, and now very little about it... how do you do that when all of the content is user-generated? And how do you link the JSON script with the PHP page?

[ClosedForLunch]

how do you do that when all of the content is user-generated? And how do you link the JSON script with the PHP page?

Auto-generate/auto-populate the JSON-LD schema with the data in your DB using PHP.

The JSON-LD <script> block(s) can be placed anywhere within the page's html as long as it passes W3C markup validation.