Google does not correctly merge microdata and json+ld in the same page using same URI id

Question

I have a product page with "microdata" and "json+ld" codes. Both of the codes refers to the same @id URI object (http://www.example.org/product#this) so I would expect to "mix/merge" both properties, but instead structured data testing tool shows 2 "individual" products so....

1- Does Google support using two syntax in the same page?
2- Is this well implemented? Can I refer two codes to the same object using itemId for microdata and @id for json+ld?
3- Can this damage my page in terms of structure data indexing?

thanks

You can check it out using this code in test tool:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product" itemid="http://www.example.org/product#this">
    <a itemprop="url" href="http://www.example.org/product">
    <div itemprop="name"><strong>Product Name</strong></div></a>
    <div itemprop="description">Product Description</div>
    <div itemprop="brand" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization"><span itemprop="name">Product Brand</span></div>
    <div itemprop="offers" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Offer">        <span itemprop="price">100</span><link itemprop="itemCondition" href="http://schema.org/NewCondition" /> New</div>
</div>
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "http://schema.org/",
  "@id": "http://www.example.org/product#this",
  "name": "Product Name",
  "@type": "Product",
  "image": "http://www.example.com/anvil_executive.jpg",
  "mpn": "925872",
  "brand": {
    "@type": "Thing",
    "name": "ACME"
  },
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "priceCurrency": "USD",
    "price": "119.99",
    "itemCondition": "http://schema.org/UsedCondition",
    "availability": "http://schema.org/InStock"
  }
}
</script>

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 18 '15 at 11:14

My guess would be that Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool doesn’t support this for different syntaxes, as it seems to work if using the same syntax. But as they still display the URIs correctly (http://www.example.org/product#this in both cases), you could argue that it’s just the tool’s interface that doesn’t merge them.
However, as far as I know Google does not document to support these subject URIs anyway (but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t support it), so it might not matter for them.

Your example works fine if using http://linter.structured-data.org/: it creates one item with both brands and both offers.

Thanks @unor, you are correct and it seems that with http://linter.structured-data.org/ it works... — aleksdj, Feb 27 '16 at 11:38
Google doesn't support merging two different syntaxes. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/59747826/565110 — David Riccitelli, Jan 15 '20 at 09:00

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 15 '20 at 08:52

While technically it is feasible to merge data coming from two different syntaxes (read microdata and json-ld) and the Structured Data Linter confirms so, Google does not support it, which means properties won't be merged (and won't satisfy Rich Snippets' requirements).

We have a final confirmation by several actors in the SEO World, including Dan Brickley and Jarno van Driel.

in general you can use both syntaxes side by side, but you won't get the fine-grained merging of triples by ID that a pure RDF application might expect (Dan Brickley on Twitter, Jan 14th, 2020, bold mine)

--

I think @danbri already was pretty clear. Highly doubt you'll get a different answer from other Googlers. (Jarno van Driel on Twitter, Jan 14th, 2020)

The proposed solution so far is to parse the microdata and publish it as JSON-LD.

Google does not correctly merge microdata and json+ld in the same page using same URI id

2 Answers2

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