--- title: "Article schema has no required properties, only recommended ones" url: https://seomadman.com/research/article-schema-no-required-properties section: research published: 2026-06-22T00:00:00.000Z modified: 2026-06-22T00:00:00.000Z author: Adam Hafez topics: ["Structured data"] --- # Article schema has no required properties, only recommended ones ## The short answer A common technical-SEO assumption is that Article schema has required fields. Google's own documentation says otherwise: no properties are required, only recommended ones, among them an image supplied in three separate aspect ratios. Recommended is not optional to ignore, since Google ties these properties directly to rich-result eligibility rather than basic indexing. ## Key takeaways - Google's Article structured data documentation states there are no required properties for Article, NewsArticle or BlogPosting, only recommended ones. - The documented recommended properties are headline, image, datePublished, dateModified, author, author.name and author.url, and publisher is not among them. - Google recommends supplying the image property in three separate aspect ratios, 16x9, 4x3 and 1x1, at a minimum of 50,000 pixels when width is multiplied by height. - Google's own stated reason for the recommended properties is that they help Google understand the page and show better title, image and date information in search results. "Required" gets applied to Article schema constantly in technical-SEO checklists and audits: no headline, fails; no image, fails; no author, fails. Google's own Article structured data documentation does not say that, and has not said it for the version of the page live today. It names recommended properties and states directly that none of them are required. ## Google's own statement: no required properties Google's [Article, NewsArticle, BlogPosting structured data documentation](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/article), last confirmed updated 2026-09-08, states it plainly: there are no required properties, and the instruction is to add the properties that apply to the content, not to satisfy a minimum checklist. That single sentence undoes a lot of audit language built around Article schema having a pass or fail gate the way Product or Recipe genuinely do, where Google's own documentation for those types does list hard requirements. This is not a loophole in the schema.org spec that Google happens to tolerate. It is Google's stated position for this specific type, distinct from how it documents other types on the same page family. A JSON-LD block that carries only `@context`, `@type` and nothing else is not malformed under this rule; it is simply a block that supplies none of the properties Google recommends, which is a different problem with a different fix. ## The recommended properties, and the image aspect-ratio detail The documented recommended properties are `author`, `author.name`, `author.url`, `dateModified`, `datePublished`, `headline` and `image`. Author can be a Person or an Organization, and Google recommends the `url` sub-property specifically so the author can be identified as a distinct entity rather than left as a bare string. Publisher, despite circulating in some secondhand summaries of this schema, is not among the properties Google's current page actually recommends for Article. The easiest one to under-supply is `image`. Google does not ask for one representative image; it asks for images in three separate aspect ratios, 16x9, 4x3 and 1x1, each at a minimum resolution of 50,000 pixels when width is multiplied by height. A page that ships a single square thumbnail, or a single wide hero image, has satisfied the property in name but not in the shape Google's documentation actually describes, since none of the other two crops exist for Google to select depending on the surface it is rendering the result on. ## Why we care The site's own [JSON-LD validator](/tools/json-ld-validator) already reflects this distinction correctly: it states outright that Google marks no properties as strictly required for Article, and flags a missing recommended property as a warning rather than a failure, which matches what this review verified directly on Google's page. The [structured data generator](/tools/schema-markup-generator) is honest about a different thing, that it applies an asterisk to properties "Google treats as required" across several schema types at once, Product and BreadcrumbList among them, which do carry genuine requirements; it does not currently call out that Article itself has none, so a team using it should not read an unstarred Article field as unimportant, only as not gating. The practical shift this piece argues for is in prioritization, not in whether to bother with Article schema at all. Google's own reasoning for these properties is that they help it understand the page and show better title, image and date information in results, which is an eligibility and display-quality claim, not an indexing gate. A team should treat a missing `datePublished` or a single-aspect-ratio image as a specific, named cost to how the article can display, not as a build-breaking error to fix before anything else ships, and should stop describing Article schema audits in the pass-or-fail language that Google's own documentation reserves for types like Product and Recipe instead. ## Frequently asked questions ### Does Article structured data have any required properties? No. Google's own Article structured data documentation states there are no required properties for Article, NewsArticle or BlogPosting, only recommended ones, and that the only obligation is to add whichever properties apply to the content. ### Which properties does Google recommend for Article schema? Author (as a Person or Organization, with author.name and author.url), dateModified, datePublished, headline and image. Publisher is not among Google's documented recommended properties for this type, despite appearing in some secondhand summaries. ### Why does the image property need three aspect ratios? Google's documentation asks for multiple high-resolution images in 16x9, 4x3 and 1x1 aspect ratios, each at a minimum of 50,000 pixels when width is multiplied by height, so different search surfaces can each use a crop that fits. ### If a property is only recommended, does skipping it cost anything? By Google's own stated reasoning, yes, in display quality rather than indexing. Google says these properties help it show better title text, images and date information for the article in search results, which is a rich-result and presentation concern, not a basic-crawling one. ## Sources 1. [Article, NewsArticle, BlogPosting structured data](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/article) - Google Search Central (primary)