Does Lithium supports Q&A schema.org structured data?

[PatrickEmin]

Hello, Google recently released Schema.org microdata markup for Q&A type sites like the Lithium forums.

Does Lithium already supports this or will it support it?

Thanks.

[VikasB]

 @PatrickEmin

Yes, Lithium already offering Q&A.  Here is the related doc

https://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Questions-and-Answers/About-Q-amp-A/ta-p/14791

[PatrickEmin]

Thank you but that was not my question. My question was: "Does Lithium supports Q&A schema.org structured data"

[ClaudiusH]

Out of the box Lithium Community doesn't yet come with the microdata Markup.

I did a few optimizations to add microdata Markup to the navigation breadcrumb here: https://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Tactical/Optimizing-your-page-preview-for-SEO/ta-p/309293

Adding Q&A Markup seems to be a bit more complex as it might only be relevant to solved topics. I will look at adding it this week and let you know my findings.

[ClaudiusH]

Reading through the schema documentation this markup would be only applicable to Lithium Q&A content. This guideline is pretty clear

Only use the QAPage markup if your page has information in a question and answer format, which is one question followed by zero or more answers.

Forum discussions are different in that they allow replies (which might not be answers) and replies to replies. Up until today there only exists a rather limited schema.org markup for this content type that only reflects an original topic post, but not replies and optional some replies that are marked as solutions/approved replies.

There is good news though: For more than two years solved topics on Lithium Communities are marked as such in search results. For details see the "SEO improvement" section in the 16.1 release notes.

[PatrickEmin]

Hi @ClaudiusH, thank you for your detailed answers.

It seems to me that one or more answers to the first post of a Lithium thread, when marked as solutions, is precisely in the scope of the guideline:

Only use the QAPage markup if your page has information in a question and answer format, which is one question followed by zero or more answers.

Replies that are either not answers to the first post or not a solution to that post, would not be marked with microdata.

[ClaudiusH]

Hm... I can see that you could read the guideline two ways (addition in red  by me):

1.  "if your page has information in a question and answer format, which is one question followed only by zero or more answers"
2.  "if your page has information in a question and answer format, which is one question followed at least by zero or more answers"

I was reading it as option 1, thereby describing pure Q&A offerings like Stackoverflow, Lithium Q&A or Microsoft Community Q&A formats where every reply is an answer that can receive up (and sometimes also down) votes.

The challenge for option 2 is to identify which replies in are actually answer candidates in a Lithium forum discussion style. Since we generally don't surface the threaded discussion style it's hard for users to understand if they are replying to the original question or another answer.

I'll create a prototype to see how complex and reliable it would be to add this markup.

[ClaudiusH · Accepted solution]

@PatrickEmin Here's some good news for you: Lithium Khoros Communities 18.12 supports the Q&A schema.org Markup out of the box. Read more about this in the 18.12 release notes.