Google, Bing, Yahoo launch Schema.org for structured data

California, Jun 3: The ultimate winner is the user! The search engine giants Google, Yahoo and Bing put aside their rivalry and joined hands to offer better search result to users. Google, Yahoo and Bing announced the launch of a new initiative called schema.org.

The motive behind the schema.org is to create and support a common vocabulary for structured data markup on web pages. With schema.org, site owners and developers can learn about structured data and improve how their sites appear on major search engines.

"Schema.org aims to be a one stop resource for webmasters looking to add markup to their pages," Google said in its blog.

The Schema.org provides a collection of schemas, or html tags, that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search providers. Search engines including Bing, Google and Yahoo rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier for people to find the right web pages.

"Many sites are generated from structured data, which is often stored in databases. When this data is formatted into HTML, it becomes very difficult to recover the original structured data. Many applications, especially search engines, can benefit greatly from direct access to this structured data," explained on schema.org.

On-page markup enable search engines to understand the information on web pages and provide richer search results in order to make it easier for users to find relevant information on the web. Markup can also enable new tools and applications that make use of the structure.

Making the schema.org more relevant, Google introduced schemas for more than a hundred new categories, including movies, music, organizations, TV shows, products, places and more. Google said that by adding these markup to sites, search engines can develop richer search experiences.

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