What you need to know
Set Article.author to a Person when a named individual wrote the article, or Organization when the organization genuinely authors the content. Use the real public name, add author.url when a useful profile exists, and use sameAs only for authoritative profiles of the same identity.
Article.author can reference Person or Organization. Person.name is the visible author name. author.url can point to a profile or biography page; sameAs can connect authoritative external profiles. Do not invent authors or expose an internal CMS username as the public author.
Key properties
The table below summarizes the fields that most often determine whether the entity is clear and internally consistent. Only provide values supported by the page.
| Property | Importance | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
author | Article relationship | Person or Organization responsible for the content. |
Person.name | Core | Public visible author name. |
Person.url | Recommended | Canonical author profile or biography URL. |
sameAs | Optional | Authoritative external profiles of the same identity. |
ProfilePage | Advanced | Useful for dedicated author profile pages. |
Person or Organization
Use Person for a named human author and Organization when the organization genuinely authors the content.
Use the public byline
Structured data should match the byline users see, not internal usernames or email prefixes.
author.url
Google recommends a URL that identifies the author when available. A dedicated author profile with biography and authored work is ideal.
sameAs
Use sameAs selectively for trustworthy external profiles representing the same identity.
Profile pages
For multi-author sites, ProfilePage can strengthen the entity graph between articles, Person and the author profile.
Organization authors
Organization is valid when content is explicitly published by a team. Keep author and publisher conceptually separate.
Quality and trust
Accurate authorship improves transparency; avoid fake expert personas created only to enrich markup.
JSON-LD examples
Article with Person author
author.url points to a real profile representing the same person.
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "BlogPosting",
"headline": "Structured Data Testing Workflow",
"datePublished": "2026-09-01T10:00:00-04:00",
"dateModified": "2026-09-18T12:00:00-04:00",
"author": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Jane Doe",
"url": "https://example.com/authors/jane-doe/",
"sameAs": [
"https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe/"
]
},
"publisher": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Example Media"
}
}Google, Bing and Yandex
Google Article documentation supports author.name and recommends author.url when a page exists that identifies the author.
Bing supports Schema.org JSON-LD and can use Person/Organization relationships to understand editorial entities.
Accurate Person and Organization entities provide machine-readable authorship context even though feature support varies.
Important: valid structured data does not guarantee a rich result. Each search engine decides whether to use the data and how to present it.
Common mistakes
- warningUsing Admin instead of the visible author.
- warningInventing an expert persona.
- warningauthor.url points to the homepage.
- warningConfusing author with publisher.
- warningAdding unrelated sameAs URLs.
Frequently asked questions
Can author be an Organization?
Yes, when the organization genuinely authors the content.
Is author.url required?
Not universally, but Google recommends it when an identifying author page exists.
What should sameAs contain?
Only authoritative URLs representing the same author identity.