A published article already states its headline, author and date in plain text somewhere on the page. Structured data restates the same facts in a form a crawler does not have to guess at, since a byline printed as 'By J. Rivera, Senior Editor' next to a date formatted as '3 days ago' is exactly the kind of prose a machine parser handles unreliably compared with an explicit author name and an ISO formatted datePublished value.
Everything runs locally in your browser. A draft headline and publish date for a story that has not gone live yet never has to leave your machine before you decide to publish it.
Article, NewsArticle or BlogPosting: picking the right type for this article schema generator
schema.org defines Article as a general type, with NewsArticle and BlogPosting as more specific subtypes that inherit everything Article has. A newsroom publishing timely reporting should use NewsArticle, which is the type behind news article structured data and the one that makes a story eligible for Google's Top Stories treatment and other news related features. A personal or company blog post that is not news reporting is better described as BlogPosting or the plain Article type.
This article schema generator lets you pick any of the three from a dropdown, and the properties you fill in stay identical regardless of which you choose, since NewsArticle and BlogPosting add no required fields beyond what Article itself needs.
The properties Google actually checks for article rich results
Google's documentation names headline, image and datePublished as the properties that matter most for google article rich results, alongside author and, for a publication with a distinct outlet identity, a publisher with its own logo. headline should match the on page title closely and stay under roughly 110 characters, since an overly long headline is truncated inconsistently across surfaces.
author accepts either a Person or an Organization. A byline naming an individual reporter should use Person with a name property. A story with no named individual author, common for wire service pickups or institutional statements, should use Organization instead rather than inventing a person who does not exist.
- headline: matches the page's own title, ideally under 110 characters.
- image: an absolute URL to the article's lead image.
- datePublished: an ISO 8601 date, for example 2026-07-29.
- dateModified: only add this if the article has genuinely been updated since publishing.
- author: a Person for a named reporter, an Organization when no individual is credited.
ISO 8601 dates and the mistake that silently breaks eligibility
datePublished and dateModified must be ISO 8601 formatted, for example 2026-07-29 or a full timestamp with a time zone offset such as 2026-07-29T14:30:00-07:00. A date typed as 'July 29, 2026' or '29/07/2026' is not valid here even though it reads perfectly clearly to a human, because the property expects a machine parseable format with no ambiguity about which number is the day and which is the month.
This tool accepts a date from a standard date picker, which always produces the correct ISO format underneath, removing the most common source of malformed date values in article markup submitted by hand.
Should you add dateModified at all?
Only add dateModified once the article has genuinely been edited after its original publication. Setting it to the same value as datePublished on every article, or worse, updating it automatically every time the page is rebuilt regardless of whether the content changed, misrepresents how fresh the content actually is and is the kind of pattern search engines have grown better at discounting over time.
Leaving dateModified out entirely is completely valid for an article that has not been revised. Add it later, honestly, the day a real correction or update happens.
How this article schema generator handles the lead image
The image property needs an absolute URL to the article's primary photograph, in a resolution generous enough for a large image card rather than a thumbnail. Google's own guidance recommends an image at least 1200 pixels wide for the best chance of the more prominent visual treatments in search and news related surfaces.
As with every other URL property in this markup, a relative path will not resolve correctly, since the JSON-LD block carries no base URL of its own the way an anchor tag on the page does.
How to generate article schema
- 1
Choose Article, NewsArticle or BlogPosting
Pick NewsArticle for timely reporting, BlogPosting for a blog post, or the plain Article type otherwise.
- 2
Add the headline and lead image
Match the headline to the page's own title and add an absolute URL to the main image.
- 3
Add the author and publish date
Enter the author name and pick the publish date. Only add a modified date if it has genuinely changed.
- 4
Generate and paste
Press generate, review the output, then copy the script tag into the article page.
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Sources and further reading
- schema.org: ArticleThe vocabulary definition for Article and its NewsArticle and BlogPosting subtypes.schema.org
- Google Search Central: Article structured dataGoogle's required and recommended properties for article rich results, including image sizing.developers.google.com
- W3C: JSON-LD 1.1The specification for the serialisation format this tool emits.w3.org
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about the article schema generator.
Use NewsArticle for timely news reporting, since it is what makes a story eligible for Top Stories and other news focused features. Use BlogPosting for an ordinary blog post, and the general Article type when neither more specific label fits. All three accept the same properties, so switching between them later is a one field change.
ISO 8601, for example 2026-07-29 or a full timestamp with a time zone offset. A human readable date like 'July 29, 2026' is not valid here, since the property must be machine parseable with no ambiguity about which number represents the day versus the month. This tool's date picker always produces the correct format.
Only if the article has genuinely been updated since it was first published. Leaving it out entirely is valid for an unedited article. Setting it to match datePublished every time, or updating it automatically on every rebuild regardless of real changes, misrepresents how fresh the content actually is.
Yes. Use an Organization for the author when no individual reporter is credited, which is common for wire service content or institutional statements. Use a Person with a name property when there is a named individual byline. Do not invent a person to fill the field when none exists.
Google recommends an image at least 1200 pixels wide for the best chance of a large image treatment in search and news surfaces. A smaller image can still be valid structured data, but it may be shown in a smaller format or excluded from the more prominent visual placements.