Can Microdata be applied on any type of HTML element? [closed]
Solution 1:
You can use every HTML5 element for Microdata …
Microdata defines 5 new attributes for HTML5:
itemid
itemprop
itemref
itemscope
itemtype
Let’s see where they can be used. Section 5.2 says:
Every HTML element may have an
itemscope
attribute specified.
So every element can have itemscope
. Further on it says:
Elements with an
itemscope
attribute may have anitemtype
attribute specified
So if it has itemscope
(and we learned that every element can have it), it can have itemtype
, too. Next:
Elements with an
itemscope
attribute and anitemtype
attribute […] may also have anitemid
attribute specified
If it has itemscope
and itemtype
, it can have itemid
, too. And:
Elements with an
itemscope
attribute may have anitemref
attribute specified
If it has itemscope
, it can have itemref
.
Only itemprop
is missing now. It’s defined in Section 5.3:
Every HTML element may have an
itemprop
attribute specified
So itemprop
can also be used on every element.
(Note that Microdata (W3C Note) refers to the HTML5 spec for defining what a "HTML element" is, so essentially "HTML element" means "HTML5 element".)
… but some elements get a different content model (when itemprop
is used)
See 8.1 Content models.
For example:
-
href
becomes a required attribute fora
andarea
-
data
becomes a required attribute foriframe
- the attributes
name
,http-equiv
andcharset
are no longer allowed onmeta
… and some elements have special rules for determining the property value (when itemprop
is used)
See 5.4 Values.
For example:
Special rules for links. Here foobar
’s value is the URL http://example.com/
, not the string Link
:
<a href="http://example.com/" itemprop="foobar">Link</a>
Here foobar
’s value is 5
, not 10
:
<data value="5" itemprop="foobar">10</data>
And search engines should know this.
If Google or other search engine services support it can’t be answered definitely, as nothing can be answered with certainty when it comes to third party services that keep their code hidden. Even if they (seem to) support it today, we can’t know what will happen tomorrow. So such questions are usually not appropriate for Stack Overflow.
However, there is no reason to assume that search engines wouldn’t support it.
Solution 2:
Simply put, "Yes". Check out the Google page yourself to see them use it in different tags: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/176035?hl=en
Solution 3:
Adding to Jeremy Miller's answer:
Microdata essentially forms objects. In valid HTML, an element with the itemscope
attribute contains all of the microdata associated with it. Also, the scope of each element with an itemprop
is enough to contain all data necessary for that property.
Imagine replacing each itemscope
element with the item itself; and replacing each itemprop
element with the property itself, and its value. (Think XML)
In your example, the item would look like this:
<movie>
<name>Avatar</name>
<director>James Cameron</director>
<genre>Science fiction</genre>
<trailer>Trailer</trailer>
</movie>
This structure of itemscope
s and itemprop
s can be applied to any suitable hierarchy of HTML elements, regardless of what elements they are. The long-winded answer is still yes, but I hope this has helped you understand how microdata is interpreted.
Also, I'm guessing your example is from here, but I suggest you give at least items 1a-1d a quick read.