Discussion Forum Rich Results

Discussion Forum structured data helps Google understand community-generated content like forum threads, Reddit-style posts, and social media discussions. It can appear in Google Search as a Discussion Forum rich result.

Table of contents

  1. When to Use
  2. Quick Start
  3. Google Required Fields
  4. Interaction Statistics
  5. Forum Section Context
  6. Reposts / Shared Content
  7. Best Practices
  8. Common Mistakes

When to Use

  • Forum threads (Discourse, phpBB, custom forums)
  • Reddit-style post/comment pages
  • Community Q&A threads
  • Social media discussion pages

Quick Start 

import { createDiscussionForumPosting } from 'schemaorg-kit';

const post = createDiscussionForumPosting({
  headline: 'Best practices for TypeScript monorepos?',
  author: { '@type': 'Person', name: 'devUser42' },
  datePublished: '2025-08-10T14:30:00Z',
  url: 'https://forum.example.com/t/typescript-monorepos/1234',
  text: 'I\'m setting up a monorepo with TypeScript. What tools and patterns do you recommend?',
  commentCount: 15,
  comment: [
    {
      '@type': 'Comment',
      text: 'Turborepo + pnpm workspaces is a great combo.',
      author: { '@type': 'Person', name: 'buildExpert' },
      datePublished: '2025-08-10T15:00:00Z',
      upvoteCount: 23,
    },
    {
      '@type': 'Comment',
      text: 'Nx is more opinionated but has better caching.',
      author: { '@type': 'Person', name: 'nxFan' },
      datePublished: '2025-08-10T15:30:00Z',
      upvoteCount: 18,
    },
  ],
});

document.head.innerHTML += post.toScript();

Google Required Fields

Field Description
headline The post title
author Post author (Person or Organization)

Google recommended: datePublished, url, text, comment

Interaction Statistics

Track likes, shares, and views using interactionStatistic:

import { createDiscussionForumPosting, InteractionCounterSchema } from 'schemaorg-kit';

const post = createDiscussionForumPosting({
  headline: 'Announcing our new open-source project',
  author: { '@type': 'Organization', name: 'Acme Labs' },
  datePublished: '2025-09-01',
  url: 'https://forum.example.com/t/announcement/5678',
  upvoteCount: 142,
  commentCount: 37,
  interactionStatistic: [
    InteractionCounterSchema.parse({
      interactionType: 'https://schema.org/LikeAction',
      userInteractionCount: 142,
    }),
    InteractionCounterSchema.parse({
      interactionType: 'https://schema.org/ShareAction',
      userInteractionCount: 28,
    }),
  ],
});

Forum Section Context

Use mainEntityOfPage or isPartOf to link the post to a parent forum or category:

const post = createDiscussionForumPosting({
  headline: 'How to optimize Next.js builds',
  author: { '@type': 'Person', name: 'webdev_sarah' },
  datePublished: '2025-10-15',
  url: 'https://forum.example.com/web-dev/nextjs-builds',
  mainEntityOfPage: 'https://forum.example.com/web-dev',
  creativeWorkStatus: 'published',
});

Reposts / Shared Content

For reposted or shared content, use the sharedContent field:

const repost = createDiscussionForumPosting({
  headline: 'RE: Great article on Rust performance',
  author: { '@type': 'Person', name: 'rustFan' },
  datePublished: '2025-11-01',
  sharedContent: {
    '@type': 'WebPage',
    url: 'https://blog.example.com/rust-performance',
    headline: 'Why Rust Is Faster Than C++ in These Benchmarks',
  },
});

Best Practices

  • Include comment data when available — Google uses it to show discussion depth
  • Set datePublished as ISO 8601 with timezone for accurate indexing
  • Add upvoteCount/downvoteCount to signal community engagement
  • Use one DiscussionForumPosting per thread — the opening post, not individual replies

Common Mistakes

Don’t use DiscussionForumPosting for Article content. This type is for user-generated discussions, not editorial articles. Use Article or BlogPosting for editorial content.

Google may show discussion forum results as carousels in search for conversational queries. Make sure comment entries have text and author for best visibility.