Article schema uses the Schema.org Article type or its subtypes, NewsArticle and BlogPosting, to describe editorial content. Google uses it to better understand a page's headline, images, publish and update dates and author. Google's documentation lists no required properties for Article, only recommended ones, because it can usually extract the basics from the page itself.
Recommended properties
Google recommends these properties. Each should match what users can see on the page.
- headline: the article title, kept reasonably short
- image: one or more crawlable images, ideally in several aspect ratios
- datePublished and dateModified, in ISO 8601 with a time zone
- author: a Person or Organization, with name and url
Choosing between Article, NewsArticle and BlogPosting
Use NewsArticle for news reporting, BlogPosting for blog content and Article for other editorial pages such as guides or reports. Google treats all three the same way for its documented features. The choice is about describing the page honestly, not unlocking anything extra.
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "How to plan a data warehouse migration",
"image": ["https://www.brackenfield.example/img/migration-16x9.jpg"],
"datePublished": "2026-03-04T09:00:00-05:00",
"dateModified": "2026-09-12T14:30:00-05:00",
"author": [{ "@type": "Person", "name": "Ama Owusu",
"url": "https://www.brackenfield.example/authors/ama-owusu" }]
}Dates are where it usually goes wrong
Google looks at visible dates and structured data dates together. Changing dateModified without a meaningful change to the content, or showing one date on the page and another in markup, sends mixed signals. Only update the modified date when the content actually changes.
Example
Article markup on a SaaS guide
A data platform, Brackenfield, publishes long-form guides. Its template outputs Article markup with the headline, a 16:9 hero image, the published and updated dates shown under the title, and an author linked to a bio page. The dates in markup come from the same CMS fields that render the visible byline.
Common mistakes
Bumping dateModified on every deploy
Templates that set the modified date to the build time make every article look freshly updated. Use the content's real edit date.
Author as a plain string with job titles
Put only the name in author.name and use url or sameAs to identify the person. Titles and company names belong elsewhere.
Questions
Google says Article markup is not required for Top stories or other news features. It helps Google understand the page details.
