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I am adding structured data to a new page which could sensibly be defined as either an article (http://schema.org/Article) or an Item List (http://schema.org/ItemList), as it is a news article about a new top 10, where all 10 items exist on their own pages elsewhere on our site.

So this page has a title, author, some unique content, a publish date... but it also has a ranked list of items.

Is there a best practice for use of schema.org structured data that would add weight to going with one or the other? Or could we even use both definitions on the same page to define the list within the article?

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  • A big win for what? Who or what are you expecting to consume this data?
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Jul 10, 2017 at 23:37
  • Just looking for best practice. Updated the question with regard to this.
    – petesiss
    Jul 11, 2017 at 8:01
  • Best practice for what? There is no point in finding some random schema to apply to your page. You have to know who is going to use it and how they get the data.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Jul 11, 2017 at 16:51
  • 1
    Haven't you seen Field of Dreams? If you build it, they will come. The OP was very specific that the schema he's considering is NOT random & in fact sounded like a very good match.
    – Wick
    Mar 29, 2018 at 17:51

2 Answers 2

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You can use both, if the ItemList is the primary thing the Article is about.

Use the mainEntity property of the Article type to provide the ItemList.

mainEntity is typically used to denote the primary thing a WebPage is about (e.g., probably the Article in your case), but this is not the only way how it can be used (bold emphasis mine):

Indicates the primary entity described in some page or other CreativeWork.

You could use mainEntity for both ways in the same document:

<body vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="ItemPage">

  <article property="mainEntity" typeof="Article">

    <ul property="mainEntity" typeof="ItemList">
    </ul>

  </article>

</body>

If the ItemList is not the primary thing the Article is about, there doesn’t seem to be a suitable property to link these items. The hasPart property can’t be used, because it expects a CreativeWork as value, but ItemList isn’t one.

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Here's a JSON-LD example I am using. Not an expert but this validates:

<script type="application/ld+json">
    {
      "@context": "https://schema.org",
      "@type": "ItemPage",
      "mainEntityofPage": {
          "@type": "WebPage",
          "@id": "https://yoursite.com"
      },
      "mainEntity": {
           "@type": "Article",
           "mainEntity": {
                "@type": "ItemList",
                "itemListElement":[
                    {
                        "@type": "ListItem",
                        "position": 1,
                        "item": {
                            "@id": "https://...",
                            "name": "..."
                            }
                    },
                    {
                        "@type": "ListItem",
                        "position": 2,
                        "item": {
                            "@id": "https://...",
                            "name": "..."
                            }
                    },
                    {
                        "@type": "ListItem",
                        "position": 3,
                        "item": {
                            "@id": "https://...",
                            "name": "..."
                        }
                    }
                ]
           }
      }
    }
    </script>
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