Microdata

Microdata is one of three structured-data formats supported by schema.org and Google (the others are JSON-LD and RDFa). Microdata embeds the data inline with the visible HTML: `<div itemscope itemtype='https://schema.org/Person'><span itemprop='name'>Jane</span></div>`.

The advantage of Microdata is that the structured data IS the rendered content — there's no risk of schema drifting from visible content. The disadvantage is the verbosity: every element with structured data has additional attributes, making templates hard to read and maintain.

Google has supported all three formats since 2011 but has consistently recommended JSON-LD since 2015. Microdata is fully valid and Google still parses it correctly. Most modern sites have migrated to JSON-LD because (1) it's cleaner, (2) frameworks generate it more easily, and (3) it can be added/edited without touching the visible markup.

When Microdata still makes sense: very simple pages with one or two schema types where you don't have a framework to generate JSON-LD, or pages where the schema is genuinely 1:1 with visible content and the inline expression is more maintainable. In practice, this is rare — most teams pick JSON-LD.

Common Microdata mistakes: missing `itemscope` (the children's `itemprop`s don't get associated with a parent type), nested types without proper `itemscope` on each level (ambiguous structure), and copy-pasted Microdata without updating type URLs (the most common bug we see in audits).