[ACCEPTED]-OpenGraph or Schema.org?-rdfa

So, to start with a couple of cliche's and 29 mangled metaphors - we're talking apples 28 and oranges a bit comparing OG and Schema.org, and 27 when it comes to this metadata it's horses 26 for courses.

The right answer depends on 25 your intent, in adding metadata to your 24 page. What is it that you're hoping to 23 gain? What is the win for you here? The 22 different forms of metadata are for slightly 21 different purposes.

Google has made it 20 clear that it's moving away from a focus 19 on microformats and onto a focus on Schema.org 18 in order to build rich-data results for 17 search. If you want to optimize for Google, Bing 16 and other search engines add the Schema.org 15 markup. It's the direction HTML5 has stepped 14 in.

Facebook OG markup is to be added if 13 what you want is to benefit from turning 12 your content into a social object and enable 11 its multi-point connectivity to the social 10 graph that is the Facebook universe.

In my 9 experience most people are looking to gain 8 from both approaches - do as well as they 7 can in search rankings and increase reach 6 and distribution through social channels. So, IMHO, it's 5 probably best to be as thorough as possible 4 adding the Schema.org markup where it fits 3 your content and use Open Graph metadata. They 2 do slightly different, but complementary 1 things.

We are talking about two separate concepts 32 here: syntax and vocabulary.

The Open Graph Protocol and Schema.org are vocabularies. Other vocabularies 31 are, for example, Dublin Core, FOAF, and SIOC.

These vocabularies 30 are typically not coupled to a specific syntax. If 29 you want to describe your content in HTML 28 documents with such a vocabulary, you could 27 use the syntaxes RDFa and/or Microdata.

Which one should I integrate as 26 I think only 1 is necessary ? [actually 25 can you only integrate one or ?]

Your first 24 example uses Open Graph Protocol (= vocabulary) with 23 RDFa (= syntax). Your second example uses 22 Schema.org (= vocabulary) with Microdata 21 (= syntax).

You can mix them up as you like. (You 20 could use both vocabularies with both syntaxes 19 on the same page. You could use both vocabularies 18 with only one syntax. You could use only 17 one vocabulary with both syntaxes, or with 16 only one syntax. …). It totally depends 15 on your specific use case.

What do you want 14 to achieve? If you are interested in a specific 13 3rd party parsing your content, you should 12 check their documentation. They typically 11 support only certain vocabularies with certain 10 syntaxes.

But if you want to mark up your 9 content with semantic metadata without having 8 a specific use case in mind, you could stick 7 to one syntax and use whichever vocabularies 6 are appropriate for your content. Personally, I’d 5 choose RDFa (Lite). It is based on RDF, which works 4 with other formats than HTML, too. It is 3 a W3C Recommendation (Microdata is not). And 2 most vocabularies you’ll find are defined 1 in RDF(S). See my answer about the future of RDFa and Microdata.

All depends if you're trying to markup your 19 website for a social world (facebook) or 18 search engines. Both are recommended but 17 if you only have time for one then prioritize 16 the company's marketing focus. OGP is huge 15 for facebook, but does not have an ounce 14 of use in SEO. Seo is completely reliant 13 on micro-data and is the way for proper 12 html5 creation.

HTML5Doctor on Microdata http://html5doctor.com/microdata/

Google talking about markup: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1211158

Bing talking about markup: http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/hh207238.aspx

Update

For 11 anyone finding this answer, a lot has changed 10 since I first posted it. Schema.org is widely 9 used by all major search engines and then 8 some but the markup is now preferred to 7 JSON-LD. Great article from SEO Skeptic outlining the 6 change made by Google.

Google Structured Data provides documentation 5 in JSON-LD and is greatly encouraged although 4 RDFa and microdata is still partial supported.

JSON-LD 3 should be used in conjunction with any social 2 channels you are trying to target OGP for 1 Facebook, Twitter Cards for Twitter, etc

They can both be used safely together. Currently 10 the two efforts use different syntaxes to 9 encode data in HTML (W3C RDFa or Microdata), but 8 there are active discussions at W3C towards 7 eventual convergence of those designs. Or 6 greater compatibility, at least. Whether 5 there will also be convergence at the vocabulary 4 level between Schema.org and OGP, or services 3 that consume both, remains to be seen. But 2 in the meantime they both add value and 1 can be safely combined.

Google does favor schema, and open graph 9 is better for web content that is related 8 to social media. Your sample code looks 7 good, but don't forget to include the prefix 6

<html prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns#">

in the head of each page that has ogp.

You 5 can check to make sure the ogp or schema 4 works by using the rich snippet testing 3 tool

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

In the case of Schema, you can check 2 by using the SDTT: Structured Data Testing 1 Tool

https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool

Why not use json-ld for markup? I'm thinking of 13 implementing json-ld based schema.org markup. That 12 way it'll not be intrusive. My ghost blog 11 uses it. Don't know if it's well supported 10 by search engines yet. But all examples 9 on schema.org now includes implementation 8 for json-ld. see here http://schema.org/WebPage

And all my apps use 7 twitter cards, fb opengraph tags and microformats 6 tags like rel and structured schema.org 5 metadata. And I find implementing schema.org 4 metadata most instrusive. So replacing this 3 last bit with json-ld and keeping code clean 2 is nice. Too many tags and it's recommended 1 to keep your html small ;)

RDFa og serves as uniform way to recognize 16 content better by REST for consideration 15 when embedding within containers not predicted 14 at the time of creation. If the container 13 is predetermined as search results, then 12 schema.org microdata is well-understood 11 by search bots. With og presentation is 10 responsibility of container publisher & such 9 quality freedom might improvise search ranking, while 8 schema.org will improvise search result 7 comprehensibility in the context of content 6 creator's intent. The vocabularies usually 5 are ignored when used with the competing 4 semantic markup technique so best to use 3 microdata with schema.org only and og with 2 RDFa only. Both microdata and RDFa can coexist 1 in same document.