JSON-LD vs. Microdata vs. RDFa: Which Structured Data Format Should You Use?
A clear comparison of JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa for structured data: how each works, why Google recommends JSON-LD, and when the older formats still make sense.
Structured data helps search engines understand your content precisely instead of guessing from raw text, which page is a product, what its price is, who wrote an article, when an event starts. But Schema.org's vocabulary can be expressed in three different syntaxes: JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa. They describe the same information. They just encode it differently. Choosing the right one saves you real maintenance pain, and for almost everyone in 2026 the choice is clear.
The same meaning, three ways to write it
All three formats let you attach Schema.org types and properties to your content. The difference is purely how the markup relates to your HTML:
- JSON-LD puts the structured data in a separate
<script>block, decoupled from the visible HTML. - Microdata annotates your existing HTML tags inline with extra attributes.
- RDFa also annotates HTML inline, using a more general, standards-heavy attribute set.
Think of it as describing the same house to three people: one hands over a tidy spec sheet (JSON-LD), while the other two walk you through the rooms sticking labels on the furniture as they go (Microdata and RDFa).
JSON-LD: the modern default
JSON-LD ("JSON for Linking Data") is a self-contained block, usually placed in the <head>:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Product",
"name": "Wireless Headphones",
"brand": "Acme",
"offers": {
"@type": "Offer",
"price": "79.99",
"priceCurrency": "USD"
}
}
</script>
Notice it lives entirely apart from your visible markup. That separation is exactly why it wins:
- Google explicitly recommends it. That alone settles it for most sites.
- It's decoupled from your HTML. You can redesign your page template without touching the structured data, and vice versa.
- It's easy to generate and inject. A single block you can render server-side, add through a tag manager, or produce with a form-based tool.
- It's readable and debuggable. One tidy JSON object beats attributes scattered across dozens of tags.
The one thing to watch: because JSON-LD is separate from the visible content, it's on you to keep the two in sync. The marked-up price, name, or date must match what the user actually sees, or you risk a guidelines violation.
Microdata: inline and older
Microdata weaves the same information into your HTML using itemscope, itemtype, and itemprop attributes:
<div itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Product">
<span itemprop="name">Wireless Headphones</span>
<span itemprop="brand">Acme</span>
</div>
Its historical selling point was that the markup sits on the visible content, so it can't drift out of sync. But that tight coupling is also its weakness: your structured data becomes entangled with your presentation. Change the layout and you risk breaking the markup. The HTML gets noisier and harder to read, and adding a new property means surgically editing existing tags. Microdata still works and is still understood by search engines, it's simply higher-maintenance than JSON-LD for no ranking benefit.
RDFa: powerful, general, rarely needed
RDFa ("Resource Description Framework in Attributes") is the most powerful and most general of the three, built for the broader linked-data ecosystem, not just search. It also annotates HTML inline, using attributes like vocab, typeof, and property:
<div vocab="https://schema.org/" typeof="Product">
<span property="name">Wireless Headphones</span>
</div>
RDFa shines when you need to mix multiple vocabularies or integrate with formal semantic-web systems. For ordinary SEO (products, articles, FAQs, breadcrumbs) that power is overkill, and it carries the same coupling and verbosity downsides as Microdata. Unless you have a specific linked-data requirement, you don't need it.
Side-by-side
| JSON-LD | Microdata | RDFa | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where it lives | Separate <script> block |
Inline in HTML | Inline in HTML |
| Google recommends | Yes | Supported | Supported |
| Coupled to page HTML | No | Yes | Yes |
| Ease of maintenance | High | Lower | Lower |
| Best for | Almost all SEO | Legacy pages already using it | Complex linked-data needs |
So which should you use?
For the overwhelming majority of sites: JSON-LD. It's Google's recommendation, the easiest to add and maintain, and the cleanest to debug. Only stick with Microdata if a page already uses it and works fine, there's no urgency to rip it out. Reach for RDFa only when you have a genuine multi-vocabulary or semantic-web requirement, which most sites never will.
One caution worth repeating: don't mix formats for the same content on the same page. Two competing descriptions of one product can confuse crawlers. Pick one syntax per page and be consistent.
Whichever you pick, validate it
Structured data that contains an error is often silently ignored, meaning all your effort produces exactly nothing, with no warning. Validation is not optional. After you write (or generate) your markup:
- Confirm the syntax parses cleanly with a JSON-LD validator, which catches malformed JSON, missing commas, and broken structure before it ever reaches Google.
- Check it against Schema.org requirements with a schema validator to confirm you've included the required properties for your chosen type.
- Verify the marked-up values match your visible content.
If you'd rather not hand-write JSON-LD at all, build it from a form with our schema generator and then run the output through the validator: generate, validate, ship. That loop keeps you out of the silent-failure trap that quietly wastes so much structured-data work.
Default to JSON-LD
JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa all express the same Schema.org meaning, but they're not equal in practice. JSON-LD's clean separation from your HTML makes it easier to write, maintain, and debug, which is why Google recommends it and why it should be your default. Keep older Microdata if it already works, save RDFa for genuine linked-data projects, never mix formats on one page, and always validate with a JSON-LD validator before you publish.
Validating what you actually shipped
Whichever format you choose, validate the result rather than trusting the template that produced it. Our JSON-LD validator parses your markup with the browser's own JSON engine, walks the whole tree including @graph arrays, and checks every @type against schema.org's required and recommended properties, separating "this disqualifies the rich result" from "this merely weakens it." You can paste a whole <script> block straight from View Source and it strips the wrapper. Nothing you paste leaves your machine, so competitor snippets and unpublished markup are fair game.
Sources
- Schema.org, the shared vocabulary all three formats express
- Intro to structured data markup (Google Search Central), why Google recommends JSON-LD
Written by
Chandrabhan Shekhawat
Founder of Gigai Kripa Services. Builds the 250+ privacy-first browser tools on this site and writes the guides that go with them.
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