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Search Engine Optimization Directory

Article Schema: Headline, Author, and Date Markup for Publishers

  • Filed November 10, 2026
  • Structured data, guide 1 of 9

Article structured data tells Google what an article is, who wrote it and when it was published and updated. Google’s documentation says that adding it can “more explicitly tell Google what your content is about (for example, that it’s a news article, who the author is, or what the title of the article is)”, and that “There are no required properties”; publishers add the properties that apply (Google’s Article structured data documentation). Because nothing is required, quality depends on the details: author names written the way Google asks, dates in the right format and in agreement with the visible page, and publisher identity consistent across the site.

Article, NewsArticle and BlogPosting

Google’s Article documentation covers Article, NewsArticle and BlogPosting. Use the type that describes the content: NewsArticle for news reporting, BlogPosting for blog posts, Article as the general type. The choice clarifies content type; it is not an eligibility shortcut for news surfaces.

The properties that matter

Property Purpose Notes from Google's documentation
<!–INLINECODE6–> The article title Keep it consistent with the visible title
<!–INLINECODE7–> Representative images Use images that represent the article
<!–INLINECODE8–> First publication ISO 8601 format
<!–INLINECODE9–> Most recent modification ISO 8601 format
<!–INLINECODE10–> The author, as Person or Organization Follow the author markup best practices
<!–INLINECODE11–> The author's name Only the name
<!–INLINECODE12–> A page that uniquely identifies the author For example a bio, "about me" or social profile page
<!–INLINECODE13–> The publishing organization Use the publisher property for the publisher's name, not author fields

Author markup best practices

Google’s documentation lists rules that are easy to break:

  • Include all authors in the markup.
  • Only the name in author.name. Do not put job titles, honorifics (“Dr”), the publisher’s name or “Posted by” text in the name. Google points to jobTitle, honorificPrefix and honorificSuffix for that information.
  • Use the right type: Person for people, Organization for organizations. If the author is an organization, Google suggests linking to the organization’s home page.
  • Link to a page that identifies the author with author.url.

Dates

Two places must agree: the visible page and the markup. Google’s guidance on publication dates says: “Add a user-visible date to the page and feature it prominently”, and notes that Google does not guarantee a byline date will be shown in results, whether visible or in structured data (Google on byline dates).

Rules of thumb:

  • Use full ISO 8601 timestamps with a time zone offset (2026-11-03T09:30:00-05:00).
  • Change dateModified only when the article content meaningfully changes. Google’s helpful content guidance asks site owners whether they are “changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed” (Google on creating helpful content).
  • Keep datePublished fixed after publication.

An example with date and author details

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "NewsArticle",
  "headline": "City Council Approves New Bike Lane Network",
  "image": [
    "https://www.example-news.com/images/bike-lanes-16x9.jpg",
    "https://www.example-news.com/images/bike-lanes-4x3.jpg",
    "https://www.example-news.com/images/bike-lanes-1x1.jpg"
  ],
  "datePublished": "2026-11-03T09:30:00-05:00",
  "dateModified": "2026-11-03T14:10:00-05:00",
  "author": [
    {
      "@type": "Person",
      "name": "Maria Lopez",
      "url": "https://www.example-news.com/staff/maria-lopez/"
    },
    {
      "@type": "Person",
      "name": "Daniel Kim",
      "url": "https://www.example-news.com/staff/daniel-kim/"
    }
  ],
  "publisher": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Example City News",
    "url": "https://www.example-news.com/"
  }
}

The names, URLs and times are placeholders. The modified time reflects an update to the story later the same day. Both authors appear in the byline on the page.

Validation

  1. Rich Results Test: confirms the markup parses and recognizes the Article type.
  2. Visible check: headline, author names and dates match what readers see.
  3. Author pages: each author.url returns 200 and identifies the person.
  4. Search Console: Google’s Article documentation points to the Unparsable structured data report for errors; check that article templates do not appear in it.

What Article markup does not do

  • It does not make a site eligible for Google News or Top Stories by itself. Google News eligibility depends on Google News policies and content, not on markup.
  • It does not guarantee that a date or author appears in results.
  • It does not establish expertise. Real author information on the page (who they are, what they cover) is what readers and evaluators look at; markup only points to it.

Article markup checklist

  • [ ] Correct type (Article, NewsArticle, BlogPosting).
  • [ ] headline consistent with the visible title.
  • [ ] All authors listed, names only in author.name, Person or Organization as appropriate.
  • [ ] author.url points to a real author page.
  • [ ] datePublished and dateModified in ISO 8601 with time zone, matching the visible dates.
  • [ ] dateModified updated only for substantive changes.
  • [ ] publisher identifies the organization consistently with Organization markup elsewhere on the site.
  • [ ] Validated and monitored.