Structured Data - Change History & Alerts

New and updated vocabulary in the area of financial incentives, legislation, and product shipping. Various build and documentation fixes.

• Added vocabulary to represent financial incentives, for example in the area of sustainability: Added new type FinancialIncentive. Added new properties for use on FinancialIncentive. 
• Added new properties for use on Legislation to include changes to the European Legislation Identifier (ELI) model.
• Enhanced shipping vocabulary: Deprecated DeliveryTimeSettings and superseded by new ShippingConditions. Added existing properties for use on ShippingConditions. Added new properties for use on ShippingConditions. Added shippingConditions with range ShippingConditions. Added fulfillmentType with a range of new enumeration FulfillmentTypeEnumeration. Added ShippingService with properties fulfillmentType, handlingTime , validForMemberTier, and shippingConditions. Added hasShippingService with range ShippingService for use on Organization and OfferShippingDetails. Added ServicePeriod with existing properties duration, cutoffTime, and businessDays for use as additional range for handlingTime and transitTime. Added orderPercentage and weightPercentage for use on ShippingRateSettings. Added Mass to the range of weight. Deprecated: shippingSettingsLink, shippingLabel, and transitTimeLabel.
• Added new property aggregateElement for use on ItemList to allow capturing of aggregate information of list items.
• Corrected definition for netWorth.
• Added wordCount for use on CreativeWork.
• Build and documentation fixes and cleanups.

Added support for member programs, and various build improvements:

• Added support for loyalty programs through new classes MemberProgram, MemberProgramTier, and enumeration TierBenefitEnumeration. Also added properties isTierOf, hasTiers, hasMemberProgram, program, hasTierBenefit, and validForMemberTier.
• Added new enumeration value RegularPrice for enumeration PriceTypeEnumeration.
• Added new enumeration values Reserved and MadeToOrder for enumeration ItemAvailability.
• Fixed documentation for duration, which must be specified in ISO 8601 duration format.
• Cleaned up PaymentMethod class.
• Removed non-existing link to count under statType.
• Added Organization to range of founder.

Adding support for GS1 Digital Link and a few smaller updates:

• Added new property hasGS1DigitalLink for use on Product, Offer, Organization and Place to allow the specification of GS1 digital links.
  
• Added new property certificationRating for use on Certification to allow the specification of a certification rating with a scale.
• Add existing property acceptedPaymentMethod for use on Organization to allow the specification of the payment method(s) a business accepts.
• Add build-time spell checks using codespell.

Restoring Physician subtype of MedicalBusiness:

• Clarifying that PhysiciansOffice is a subtype of MedicalBusiness.

Added support for Certifications and a few smaller updates:

• Added Certification to allow the specification of certifications for places, organizations, products, and persons. Compatible with gs1:CertificationDetails.
  
• Added colorSwatch.
  
• Added KeepProduct for ReturnMethodEnumeration.
  

Added vocabulary for describing types of digital sources (in collaboration with IPTC), and clarifying subtypes of Physician:

• Added IndividualPhysician, PhysiciansOffice as subtypes of Physician to clarify the longstanding ambiguity between these two different interpretations of the Physician type. Amended occupationalCategory to be applicable here and added usNPI for use with NPI identifiers in the US.
  
• To help address situations around the responsible use of generative AI, we add a "digital source type" vocabulary based on IPTC's definitions. This consists of a property digitalSourceType, an enumeration type IPTCDigitalSourceEnumeration, and a set of 14 coded values such as TrainedAlgorithmicMediaDigitalSource mapping directly to the IPTC list.
  

A collection of small fixes based on publisher feedback:

• Added agentInteractionStatistic to provide a way of counting interactions where the item of interest is in an "agent" rather than "object" role on the relevant Action.
• Provided a clearer way to indicate non-Comment items that Comments are attached to, by documenting the use of parentItem on CreativeWork in general. Also made it more explicit that this is especially applicable to those creative works beneath Comment in the type hiearchy which are mentioned in the definition, i.e. Question and Answer.
• Added Comment to the domain of sharedContent to better support link shares on replies/comments even though a lot of sites now support this.
• Expanded range of uploadDate to include DateTime, correcting a longstanding bug.
• Improved error reporting in case the parsing of JSON-LD examples fails.
• Improvements to unit-testing code.
• Fixed all RDF comments that did not finish with a punctuation. Plus improved reporting of these.

Versions 16-22 released in comparatively quick succession, with a range of smaller fixes and updates, including:

• Removed unnecessary reference to geo prefix in Json-ld context file.
• Added example for Drug type.
• Added tripOrigin.
• Added PoliticalParty as type of Organization.
• Fixed a typo in maximumVirtualAttendeeCapacity ("physical" instead of "virtual").
• Added DefinedTerm as an expected value for measurementTechnique and measurementMethod.
• Added an explicit subtype of MediaObject for text: TextObject, and made it a possible expected value for description.
• Noted that thumbnail is potentially applicable to any CreativeWork.
• Removed "courseLength" and added courseSchedule to properly reflect consensus of the public discussion. Added observationPeriod to accompany the recent additions around Observation.
• Amended additionalType to anticipate textual values.
• Consistent formatting of ISSN text in examples.
• Reword definition of timeRequired to be less specific to learning resources.
• Added Microdata example for BlogPosting.
• Added an example of ESIP Science-On-Schema markup to Dataset and ResearchProject.
• Added PerformanceRole example actor property.
• Corrected priceCurrency examples in Offer examples.
• Added bed and occupancy to Accomodation and added a subtype of LodgingBusiness called VacationRental.
• Improvements to Course, introducing properties courseLength, totalHistoricalEnrollment, financialAidEligible, and syllabusSections, alongside side a supporting type, Syllabus.
• The titleEIDR property is now also expected on TVSeason and TVSeries, reflecting industry practice.
• Updated the earlier draft of a vocabulary for statistical observations. The StatisticalPopulation construct is no longer central. Introduced a new StatisticalVariable type, an abstraction for properties that can be measured in a particular place and time. These need not be statistical.

Changes in Core section:

• Added new examples for Blog and BlogPosting.
• Added URL to range of target property (used on Action types).
• Add Person as expected type to hiringOrganization.
• Add DateTime as expected type to expires.

Changes in Health-lifesci section:

• Make Drug and DietarySupplement inherit from Product.

Changes in Pending section:

• Added a checkoutPageURLTemplate property to carry template-ized information about checkout page URLs.
• Added existing properties height, width, depth, and weight for use on OfferShippingDetails to specify the shipping dimensions of a product.
• Added a new shippingOrigin property with expected values of type DefinedRegion for use on OfferShippingDetails.
• Added new property asin as a sub property of identifier with expected values of type Text or URL to represent Amazon Standard Identification Numbers. The asin property is primarily intended for use on type Product but can also be used on Offer and Demand.
• Added existing properties positiveNotes and negativeNotes for use on Product to allow the specification of (positive and negative) highlights for products sold online.

Changes to the Core section:

• Fixed incorrect longitude value for Empire State Building in example eg-0005.
• Added gameEdition for VideoGame by analogy with bookEdition.

Additionally, changes made to the 'Pending' section.

Lots of changes to the Pending section, plus two additions to the Core section:

• Added actor to PodcastSeries.
• Added location, startTime and endTime to InteractionCounter.

The Structured Data Testing Tool's new replacement is now in beta, in the form of the Schema Markup Validator tool.

To load any page into the Schema Markup Validator with just one click, we've created a handy bookmarklet which you can find here: Schema Markup Validator bookmarklet.

Changes to the Core section:

• Fixed typo in isLiveBroadcast.
• Updated JSON-LD example in mainEntityOfPage.
• Add ineligibleRegion as expected on the MediaObject type.
• Add duration as expected on the Episode type.
• Clarified definition of schemaVersion.
• Added property ineligibleRegion to MediaObject type.

Additionally, changes made to the 'Pending' section.

Changes to the Core section:

• Fixed typo in description of ReceiveAction.
• Fixed invalid JSON-LD in example #eg-0449 on VideoGame.
  
• Removed redundant property definitions for upvoteCount & downvoteCount.
  
• Fixed invalid term links identified in Examples files.

Additionally, changes made to the 'Pending' section.

Changes to the Core section:

• Improve support for controlled taxonomies (e.g. SKOS) by supporting URLs into taxonomies for the keywords field: added URL and DefinedTerm as expected values.
• SkiResort should be a subclass of Resort (in addition to the existing SportsActivityLocation supertype).
• A parentItem of a Comment should be a Comment, not a Question.
• The supertype of Question should be Comment, by analogy with Answer.
• Changed description to reviewBody in a Review example.

Additionally, changes made to the 'Pending' section.

Changes to the Core section:

• Improvements around enumerations. Some code improvements to present subtyped Enumerations more usefully, and addition of a StatusEnumeration type to group numerous enumerations from various kinds of status-related situations.
• Fixed definition of LockerDelivery and ParcelService to correctly define them as enumeration members of DeliveryMethod.
• Defined expected type of several properties in ExercisePlan to be QuantitativeValue instead of the incorrect value of QualitativeValue.

Additionally, changes made to the 'Pending' and 'health-lifesci' sections.

No Core changes, however some changes made to the 'Pending' section.

Changes to the Core section:

• EducationalOrganization has an additional supertype of CivicStructure, clarifying that it can be used with announcementLocation.

Additionally, changes made to the 'Pending' section.

No Core changes, however some changes made to the 'Pending' section.

No Core changes, however some changes made to the 'Pending' section.

No Core changes, however some changes made to the 'Pending' section.

Changes to the Core section:

• Removed several largely un-used medical health properties whose names were inappropriately general: action, background, cause, cost, function, indication, origin, outcome, overview, phase, population, purpose, source, subtype. Note that we do not remove terms casually, but in the current case the usability consequences of keeping them in the system outweighed the benefits of retaining them, even if flagged as archived/superseded.
• Introduced a VirtualLocation type, to support description of Events whose location is online. Added eventAttendanceMode to clarify the current attendance mode of an event (online, offline or a mix). Also added a new enumeration value for eventStatus for Event: EventMovedOnline.

Additionally, changes made to the 'Pending' and 'bib' sections.

Changes to the Core section:

• Made itemOffered and offers fully inverseOf each other.
• Reworded datePosted to avoid tying this property to overly-specific usecase (i.e. it originally assumed usage only with JobPosting).
• Shortened definition of PreOrder from ItemAvailability enumeration.
• Added note to descriptions for Offer and AggregateOffer indicating default businessFunction.
• Extended rangeIncludes of datePublished to include DateTime.
• Added MusicRecording as an expected value of audio.
• Added Person and Organization to the domain for interactionStatistic.
• Added MediaGallery as a super-type of ImageGallery and VideoGallery, to allow for a mixed-media collection page type.
• Added BroadcastService to the domain for inLanguage.
• Added SportsEvent to the domain for sport.

Additionally, changes made to the 'Pending' and 'bib' sections.