Person Schema Missing

Issue No: 148

Category: Structured Data & Rich Results

Issue type: Suggestion

Priority: STANDARD

Description

Author profile or team member pages are missing Person schema, weakening E-E-A-T signals and preventing attribution of content to a verified, machine-readable author entity.

How do we capture it

• Detect author/team pages via URL patterns (/author/, /team/, /bio/)
• Check JSON-LD for "@type": "Person"
• If absent → trigger issue

What to store

StructuredDataAudit record with schemaType = Person, issueNumber = 151, plus StructuredDataField rows:

Field	Type	Comment
has_job_title	boolean	jobTitle present
has_works_for	boolean	worksFor linking to Organization entity
has_same_as	boolean	sameAs linking to LinkedIn/social profiles
has_know_about	boolean	knowsAbout expertise topics declared

Core audit fields used: isPresent, hasName, hasUrl, hasImage, hasId, rawJson

Condition for trigger

• Trigger Rule 1: Schema absent on author page
  • Target Field: isPresent
  • Evaluation Logic: isPresent = false AND page identified as author or team member page
  • Severity: STANDARD
  • Diagnostic Message: "Author or team member page detected but no Person schema found."

Sources

• Schema.org — Person
• Google — Article Author Guidelines
• Google — E-E-A-T

Long description

Person creates a machine-readable E-E-A-T chain: article → written by → person → works for → organization → verified by → social profiles.

Using @id enables cross-page entity linking:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Person",
  "@id": "https://www.example.com/author/jane-smith",
  "name": "Jane Smith",
  "jobTitle": "Senior SEO Analyst",
  "worksFor": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Example Corp" },
  "knowsAbout": ["SEO", "Structured Data", "Technical SEO"],
  "sameAs": [
    "https://linkedin.com/in/janesmith",
    "https://twitter.com/janesmith"
  ]
}

Then in Article schema: "author": { "@type": "Person", "@id": "https://www.example.com/author/jane-smith" }

How to Fix

1. Create an author profile page for each writer at /author/name
2. Add Person JSON-LD with name, jobTitle, worksFor, sameAs
3. Use @id so Articles can reference the Person entity
4. Add knowsAbout for topic expertise signals
5. Link to LinkedIn and other verified professional profiles via sameAs