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Article Schema Done Right: Authorship, Dates, Trust

Published April 22, 2026 · Updated September 13, 2026 · ClickRadius Institute

Article structured data can state what a page is, who authored it, and when it was published or substantively revised. Reviewer attribution is a related but different statement. This guide separates Schema.org vocabulary from Google's documented Article feature, visible reviewer evidence, ClickRadius measurement, and downstream outcomes.

Schema-guidance evidence boundary. Vocabulary validity, parser acceptance, Google Article feature support, observed Search presentation, AI citation, and attributable outcome are six separate states. A valid Schema.org relationship does not establish Google Article feature support or any downstream outcome. ClickRadius currently has no reviewer-specific score.

What the current source contracts establish

Source checkpoint (reviewed September 13, 2026). Schema.org defines reviewedBy on WebPage, with Person or Organization values. Its stated meaning is the people or organizations that reviewed the content of that web page for accuracy or completeness.

Google's current Article structured-data documentation names its Google-supported Article properties: author, author.name, author.url, dateModified, datePublished, headline, and image. It does not list or document reviewedBy. That absence does not prove Google rejects or ignores the property; it means this guide has no first-party basis for calling it a Google Article feature.

Google's general structured-data policies supply another boundary: markup must represent the page and must not mislead, and valid markup still does not guarantee a Search feature. A validator accepting a Schema.org term establishes neither Google feature eligibility nor observed use.

Model the page, article, and reviewer as different nodes

An Article is the work. A WebPage is the page carrying it. A reviewer is the real Person or Organization that checked the page for accuracy or completeness. Keep those identities separate and connect them explicitly:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@graph": [
    {
      "@type": "WebPage",
      "@id": "https://example.com/guide#webpage",
      "url": "https://example.com/guide",
      "mainEntity": {"@id": "https://example.com/guide#article"},
      "reviewedBy": {"@id": "https://example.com/team/jane-rivera#person"}
    },
    {
      "@type": "Article",
      "@id": "https://example.com/guide#article",
      "headline": "A Guide That Was Actually Reviewed",
      "author": {"@id": "https://example.com/team/alex-chen#person"},
      "mainEntityOfPage": {"@id": "https://example.com/guide#webpage"}
    },
    {
      "@type": "Person",
      "@id": "https://example.com/team/jane-rivera#person",
      "name": "Jane Rivera",
      "url": "https://example.com/team/jane-rivera"
    }
  ]
}

Putting reviewedBy directly on the Article node crosses the property's current Schema.org domain. ClickRadius's pinned vocabulary validator reports that exact shape as a domain violation; the equivalent relationship on WebPage passes its vocabulary check. Neither verdict says what Google or an AI provider will display.

A review needs evidence outside the graph

A reviewer statement should be visible to a reader and true for the exact revision being served. Keep review scope, reviewed revision, review date, credential evidence, consent, and withdrawal as separate governed facts. A name and credential must come from confirmed source evidence rather than being inferred from the topic or supplied by a model.

The reviewer is not automatically the author. Use author for the person or organization responsible for authoring the article, and use reviewedBy on the page only when a real review for accuracy or completeness occurred. A visible label such as “Reviewed for accuracy by Jane Rivera on September 13, 2026” should agree with the structured statement and the retained review record.

If the reviewer withdraws permission, a credential expires, the reviewed text changes materially, or the review covered only a bounded subject, the publication workflow needs a decision about the affected page. Schema cannot supply that governance by itself.

What ClickRadius does today

The current ClickRadius page crawler records qualifying top-level Person author objects from JSON-LD but does not ingest, record, or score reviewedBy. Only a receipt-valid, current, client-confirmed primary author can contribute author evidence to the served Entity / E-E-A-T readiness family. There is no reviewer-specific score.

The schema publication boundary uses ClickRadius's pinned Schema.org vocabulary to reject unknown and out-of-domain terms. It therefore refuses Article.reviewedBy and accepts a correctly connected WebPage.reviewedBy graph at the vocabulary layer. This is validation, not a claim of Google support, Search presentation, AI inclusion, or business impact.

ClickRadius does have a governed author-authority workflow: a real named person, title, credentials, confirmation receipt, exact revision, and a fixed current-use term. That workflow governs new work under an author byline. It is not a reviewer workflow, and this page does not imply that reviewer consent, revision binding, or withdrawal currently exists in the product.

Article properties Google currently documents

author

Google documents Person or Organization values and recommends a URL or sameAs link that uniquely identifies the author. Use whichever type is true. A bare string states a name, but it does not provide the documented object shape or a URL that distinguishes one person from another.

"author": {
  "@type": "Person",
  "name": "Alex Chen",
  "url": "https://example.com/team/alex-chen"
}

Do not invent an author, title, license, credential, profile, or responsibility statement. The visible byline, author page, confirmation record, and markup should describe the same party.

datePublished and dateModified

Use ISO 8601 dates with timezone information when the value includes a time. datePublished is the first publication date. dateModified is the most recent substantive revision date when that property applies. Show the dates readers need and keep the markup consistent with the page; a cosmetic date change makes the publisher's own statement inaccurate.

headline and image

The headline should identify the article accurately. Google asks for representative, crawlable, indexable images and recommends multiple high-resolution 16:9, 4:3, and 1:1 versions. A site logo is a publisher asset, not automatically a representative image for every article. If no article-specific image is evidenced, omit the Article image rather than labeling a generic logo as the article image.

Schema.org properties and Google-supported properties are not the same list

Schema.org defines a broad vocabulary. Google publishes narrower feature documentation for the properties it supports on particular Search experiences. A property may be valid Schema.org without being listed in Google's Article documentation; a Google-supported property may still be inapplicable or false on a particular page; and complete markup still does not guarantee presentation.

Likewise, multiple JSON-LD scripts and multiple connected entities are valid. The avoidable defect is contradictory duplicates of the same primary Article—not the existence of more than one script or more than one node. Stable @id values identify nodes; they do not guarantee that a consumer will fetch another document and import missing properties.

Implementation checklist

  1. Choose Article, BlogPosting, or NewsArticle according to the content actually served; the latter two are specialized descendants of Article.
  2. Use an honest Person or Organization author and include the authors visible on the page.
  3. Keep datePublished, substantive dateModified, headline, and representative images consistent with visible content.
  4. If an accuracy/completeness review occurred, place reviewedBy on the WebPage, not on the Article.
  5. Keep authoring and reviewing as distinct roles; do not convert an expert reviewer into the author.
  6. Retain evidence for the exact reviewer, credentials, scope, revision, date, consent, and withdrawal state before publishing the relationship.
  7. Validate vocabulary separately from Google's applicable feature contract, public readback, and any measured external outcome.

Frequently asked questions

Does Google support reviewedBy for Article structured data?

Google's current Article documentation does not list or document reviewedBy among its Google-supported Article properties. Schema.org defines reviewedBy for WebPage, with Person or Organization values. That makes the relationship valid Schema.org vocabulary on a WebPage; it does not establish Google Article feature support, a rendered Search treatment, or an AI citation.

Where should reviewedBy be placed?

Place reviewedBy on the WebPage node and point it to the real Person or Organization that reviewed the page for accuracy or completeness. Keep the Article as a separate node connected to that WebPage. The visible page should identify the reviewer and preserve review scope, reviewed revision, review date, credential evidence, consent, and withdrawal as separate governed facts.

What does ClickRadius currently measure about authors and reviewers?

The current ClickRadius page crawler records qualifying top-level Person author objects from JSON-LD but does not ingest, record, or score reviewedBy. Only a receipt-valid, current, client-confirmed primary author can contribute author evidence to the served Entity / E-E-A-T readiness family. There is no reviewer-specific score.

Use the free AI Readiness Score to inspect the evidence ClickRadius currently measures, or compare current plans on the pricing page. A scan result is not reviewer verification or a Google/AI outcome claim.

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