Google has upgraded its Developers Page specifically for article structured data. This includes recipe articles. These updates are linked with publication and modification dates. Additional properties are arbitrary and are suggested if you think they are relevant to your situation. Google Structured Data Testing Tool won’t issue a warning in case you don’t use these properties in your structured data. There are realistic reasons why you should think about using them.
What alterations have taken place on Google Developer’s Page?
Google’s Developer page on article associated schemas has been updated. Google has added an extra recommendation for using datePublished and dateModified properties to the article type of content. Usage of these properties is nonobligatory. Google offers publishers the freedom to decide if properties are suitable.
Should you consider using these properties?
These properties are helpful when an article gets published, especially on topics which are not evergreen and change periodically. Typical examples of non-evergreen content include product reviews, news, and information based on technology. Under these circumstances, it can be useful to indicate Google and readers that an article has a recent date of publishing. This can in a great way make an article more interesting to a reader for content for which timeliness matters.
Should publishers of evergreen content utilize these properties?
Evergreen content refers to the type of content which stays the same for years. Examples of this type of content include how-to articles, recipes and movie reviews. In case you update an older article, it would be wise on your part to indicate to Google and visitors to your website that you have modified an article to ensure that it is relevant to them. For instance, if a technology-based article in which technology is updated then a tutorial will also need to be updated to make it relevant.
dateModified property is helpful for indicating that an article has been modified. This can also make an article more interesting for potential visitors to a site by signifying that the article is still relevant.
Should recipe bloggers utilize these properties?
Recipe based content is usually regarded as evergreen content. However, some people feel that recipes indicate how a dish is cooked at any given time period and can change.
Example of Schema.org datePublished
Official documentation at Schema.org has published an example of how to utilize datePublished property with JSON-LD. Schema.org utilizes the example of a recipe based article.
As shown in the above example, adding additional publication date details is quite simple. You only need to add one line within the befitting section of the type of article.
How to utilize dateModified?
Using this example, we can add the dateModified property like this:
