Second Spike Update

The following update is meant to provide some clarity on the way in which a wikimedia article can be split in multiple section using the scheme.org data structure, and hopefully contribute to the SEO rating of the pages.

For the following example, I have used the same page as the first example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Festival
The initial report on the page (includes wikidata schema.org info): https://search.google.com/test/rich-results/result/r%2Farticles?id=m1UlNKeMzHcftxRyDukVAg

What was achieved
I have been able to create a small POC in which the Schema.org section would provide further information on sections and other information within the section. This is just an example and the json could be expanded to have all the links and sub-sections.

In my example, I have added a section (history) and defined 2 articles (Michael Eavis and National Jazz and Blues Festival) as part of the new section.

From the JSON created, SEOs will now be aware of the "history section" and of the article/images that are linked within this individual sections

How was achieved
The Schema.org JSON used to generate the attached report was: Part of this schema is already available within the original page, and most of the addition has been within the "hasPart"

{
    "@context": "https:\/\/schema.org",
    "@type": "Article",
    "name": "Glastonbury Festival",
    "identifier": "Glastonbury_Festival",
    "url": "https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Glastonbury_Festival",
    "sameAs": "http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q309066",
    "mainEntity": "http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q309066",
    "author": {
        "@type": "Organization",
        "name": "Contributors to Wikimedia projects"
    },
    "publisher": {
        "@type": "Organization",
        "name": "Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.",
        "logo": {
            "@type": "ImageObject",
            "url": "https:\/\/www.wikimedia.org\/static\/images\/wmf-hor-googpub.png"
        }
    },
    "hasPart": [
        {
            "@type": "Article",
            "name": "Glastonbury Festival - History",
            "headline": "Glastonbury Festival - History section",
            "identifier": "Glastonbury_Festival--history",
            "mentions": [
                {
                    "@type": "article",
                    "name": "Michael Eavis",
                    "headline": "Athelstan Joseph Michael Eavis",
                    "url": "https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Michael_Eavis",
                    "abstract": " is an English dairy farmer and the co-creator of the Glastonbury Festival, which takes place at his farm in Pilton, Somerset.",  
                    "author": {
                        "@type": "Organization",
                        "name": "Contributors to Wikimedia projects"
                    },
                    "image":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thu…ael_Eavis_04_-_Glastonbury_Festival_2019_crop.jpg"
                },
                {
                    "@type": "article",
                    "name": "National Jazz and Blues Festival",
                    "headline": "National Jazz and Blues Festival",
                    "url": "https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/National_Jazz_and_Blues_Festival",
                    "abstract": "The National Jazz and Blues Festival was the precursor to the Reading Rock Festival and was the brainchild of Harold Pendleton, the founder of the prestigious Marquee Club in Soho.",  
                    "author": {
                        "@type": "Organization",
                        "name": "Contributors to Wikimedia projects"
                    },
                    "image":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/National_Jazz_and_Blues_Festival_1975_%28Reading%29_stage.jpg/480px-National_Jazz_and_Blues_Festival_1975_%28Reading%29_stage.jpg"
                }
            ],
            "author": {
                "@type": "Organization",
                "name": "Contributors to Wikimedia projects"
            },
            "image": "\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/d\/d6\/Michael_Eavis_%284742590455%29.jpg\/330px-Michael_Eavis_%284742590455%29.jpg"
        }
    ],
    "datePublished": "2002-09-01T15:04:23Z",
    "dateModified": "2022-03-16T09:30:14Z",
    "image": "https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/c\/cc\/Glastonbury_Tribute.jpg",
    "headline": "performing arts festival in Somerset, England"
}

What are the "issues" encounted
While developing the POC I encounted the following difficulties or possible blockers:

• The main "wikidata" schema.org had to be modified to include the new information
• I tried to create different "schemas" but was not able to use the "identifier" to connect them (further investigation needed to solve this)
• We need to decide how to define the "links" between the sections. These could be:
  • isPartOf: Indicates an item or CreativeWork that this item, or CreativeWork (in some sense), is part of.
  • isBasedOn: A resource from which this work is derived or from which it is a modification or adaption.
  • mentions: Indicates that the CreativeWork contains a reference to, but is not necessarily about a concept.

Reports link

New report: https://search.google.com/test/rich-results/result/r%2Farticles?id=81wcVsQ2UNEd4VMaj1xZFQ

@MarkTraceur @CBogen I have updated the ticket with all the information that you requested.

Please let me know if there is any further information or investigation that you want me to work on before moving this task further.

SEOs will now be aware of the "history section" and of the article/images that are linked within this individual sections.

New link since the one above expired: https://search.google.com/test/rich-results/result/r%2Farticles?id=H5aqq5fJKvmAshH7IMQiSg

A couple of screenshots in case the above expires again:

Just wanted to mention that Google seems to support dynamically-generated JSON-LD metadata, see https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/intro-structured-data#structured-data-format .
This can be either client-side or server-side, see https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/generate-structured-data-with-javascript#custom-javascript

As a result, a MediaWiki gadget might be a viable solution to test at scale. I guess this would require an HTTP endpoint to serve section topics data.

As a result, a MediaWiki gadget might be a viable solution to test at scale. I guess this would require an HTTP endpoint to serve section topics data.

A big caveat raised by @Cparle is that we need to get the gadget approved by the community: for Google to pick up a page with schema.org markup, it has to be the public version.

Can we clarify exactly what we're going to use to specify section topics?

We'll be using hasPart (or isPartOf) to indicate sections, and about to indicate what the section is about ... but how are we going to identify/describe the topics? Just wikidata ids are probably not going to be useful for search results. I expect that at the very least we'll need the title and the url of the article on the current wiki that corresponds to the wikidata id. Is that what you expect @CBogen ?

So Glastonbury might have this

"hasPart": [
        {
            "@type": "Article",
            "name": "Glastonbury Festival - History",
            "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Festival#History",
            "about": [
                {
                    "@type": "article",
                    "name": "National Jazz and Blues Festival",
                    "url": "https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/National_Jazz_and_Blues_Festival",
                    "mainEntity": "https:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/wiki\/Q3336901"
                },
                { ... }
            ]
        }
    ]

In T302735#8264069, @Cparle wrote:

I expect that at the very least we'll need the title and the url of the article on the current wiki that corresponds to the wikidata id. Is that what you expect @CBogen ?

Yes, that looks right to me! @AUgolnikova-WMF do you agree?

BTW - I think we should create a new ticket to account for this work instead of continuing this discussion here. I've created a stub at T318722; I'll let @AUgolnikova-WMF fill it in.

@CBogen Sounds good to me.