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I have searched quite a bit for this and I am not happy enough with what I have read. I also found these questions here:

I have a news/social network site in Spanish and wanted to know what would be the best format to implement.

Currently, I have both running. But I want to know if it is better to have only one, if so, which one would best fit my site? Or, can I keep both of them?

I want to target most search engines, not only Google.

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Both are solutions for semantically annotating your content, but in very different ways:

  • Microdata extends HTML5 (e.g., by introducing new attributes like itemprop), while Microformats only uses existing HTML mechanisms (like class and rel attributes).

  • With Microdata, you can use almost any vocabulary (a popular one is Schema.org), with Microformats you can only use the Microformats that are listed in their wiki.

And yes, you can use both, Microdata and Microformats, for the same document/content. You could even use RDFa in addition, too (see also: Differences between Microdata and RDFa).

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  • Good so far, I just forgot to ask, are there any advantages for using more than one?
    – Gixty
    Commented Dec 4, 2014 at 13:10
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    @Gixty: Consumers (search engines, browser add-ons, etc.) don’t necessarily support all syntaxes/vocabularies, so yes, it can make sense to use more than one way. But unless you have specific consumers in mind (where you know that one only supports X and the other one only Y), I wouldn’t bend over backwards: only implement more than one way if it doesn’t cost you much. And if in doubt which one to use, I’d go with RDFa (Lite).
    – unor
    Commented Dec 4, 2014 at 13:36
  • Great, perfect! Just marked it. I think I will go with microdata and RDFa.
    – Gixty
    Commented Dec 4, 2014 at 13:44

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