Skip to main content

Schema piece - Person

Describes an individual person. Most commonly used to identify the author of a piece of content (such as an Article or Comment).

May also identify the publisher of a WebSite (or other content) in some cases.

Triggers​

Should be added as top-level nodes in the graph, as/when required by other nodes. E.g., when an Article has an author.

Required properties​

A valid Person must have the following properties.

  • @type: Person.
  • @id: The site's home URL appended by #/schema/Person/{{ID}}, where {{ID}} is a unique identifier.
    • Note that the {{ID}} component should not reveal personally identifiable or sensitive information (e.g., avoid using a username or email address, or hash+salt these values).
  • name: The full name of the Person.

Failure scenarios​

If any of the required fields are missing or invalid, the node should not be output.

If the node is not output, any entities which would otherwise have declared a relationship with the Person (e.g., as the publisher of a WebSite, or the author of an Article) should remove those references.

'Admin' usernames​

If the name of the person is 'admin' or similar (or localised equivalents), then the Person should be invalidated; we should never present content as being authored by 'admin'.

Optional properties​

The following should be added whenever available and valid:

  • description: The user bio, truncated to 250 characters.
  • sameAs: An array of URLs representing declared social/authoritative profiles of the person (e.g., a Wikipedia page, or Facebook profile).
  • image: An array of references-by-ID to ImageObject nodes which represent the person.
  • url: The URL of the users' profile page (if they're affiliated with the site in question), or to their personal homepage/website.

Conditional properties​

Optional properties which should only be output when the required criteria is met.

Examples​

Minimum criteria​

{
      "@context": "https://schema.org",
      "@graph": [
          {
              "@type": "Person",
              "@id": "https://www.example.com/#/schema/Person/abc123",
              "name": "Example person name"
          }
      ]
  }

Extended criteria​

{
      "@context": "https://schema.org",
      "@graph": [
          {
              "@type": "Person",
              "@id": "https://www.example.com/#/schema/Person/abc123",
              "name": "Example person name",
              "image": {
                  "@id": "https://www.example.com/uploads/example-image.jpg"
              },
              "sameAs": [
                  "https://www.wikipedia.com/example-person",
                  "https://www.facebook.com/example-person"
              ]
          }
      ]
  }

WordPress API: Change Organization Schema output​

To make changes to the Person schema that Yoast SEO outputs, you can use our wpseo_schema_person filter. Here is an example:

Change person output​

add_filter( 'wpseo_schema_person', 'schema_change_person', 11, 2 );

/**
 * Changes the Yoast SEO Person schema.
 *
 * @param array             $data    The Schema Person data.
 * @param Meta_Tags_Context $context Context value object.
 *
 * @return array $data The Schema Person data.
 */
function schema_change_person( $data, $context ) {
    if ( isset( $data['worksFor'] ) && $data['worksFor'] === 'Yoast' ) {
        // Make references to "Yoast" actually reference the organization's graph piece.
        $data['worksFor'] = [ '@id' => $context->site_url . Schema_IDs::ORGANIZATION_HASH ];
    }

    return $data;
}

Change person being output​

If you want to change the person being output in the schema, you can filter it like this:

add_filter( 'wpseo_schema_person_user_id', 'change_schema_person_id' );

/**
 * Changes the Yoast SEO Person schema.
 *
 * @param int $person_id The Schema Person ID.
 *
 * @return int $person_id The (possibly altered) person ID.
 */
function change_schema_person_id( $person_id ) {
    if ( $person_id === 12 ) {
        return 3; // Make sure this is a valid user ID.
    }
    return $person_id;
}

Social profiles​

If you want to change which profiles to show on Person output in the sameAs array, you can hook into our wpseo_schema_person_social_profiles filter. We do this on yoast.com to add people's GitHub and WordPress profile as well as their personal sites to their sameAs output:

add_filter( 'wpseo_schema_person_social_profiles', 'yoast_add_social_profiles' );

/**
 * Adds social profiles to our sameAs array.
 *
 * @param array $profiles Social profiles.
 *
 * @return array Social profiles.
 */
function yoast_add_social_profiles( $profiles ) {
    array_push( $profiles, 'github', 'personal', 'wordpress' );

    return $profiles;
}

To make more changes to our Schema output, see the Yoast SEO Schema API.