Person Structured Data

Person structured data helps Google understand who people are across the web — connecting authors to their articles, linking social profiles, and powering Knowledge Panel signals.

Table of contents

1. When to Use
2. Quick Start
3. As Article Author
4. Cross-Referencing with @graph
5. Interaction Statistics
6. Key Fields
7. Best Practices
8. Common Mistakes

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When to Use

• Author attribution on articles and blog posts
• Team member pages on company sites
• Speaker profiles on event pages
• Creator credits on recipes, courses, videos

---

Quick Start

import { createPerson } from 'schemaorg-kit';

const author = createPerson({
  name: 'Dr. Sarah Kim',
  url: 'https://example.com/authors/sarah',
  image: 'https://example.com/photos/sarah.jpg',
  jobTitle: 'Machine Learning Engineer',
  worksFor: { '@type': 'Organization', name: 'Acme AI' },
  sameAs: [
    'https://github.com/sarahkim',
    'https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahkim',
    'https://twitter.com/sarahkim_ml',
    'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Kim_(engineer)',
  ],
});

---

As Article Author

The most common use of Person is as an author on Article, BlogPosting, or NewsArticle:

import { createArticle, createPerson } from 'schemaorg-kit';

const article = createArticle({
  headline: 'Understanding Transformer Architecture',
  datePublished: '2025-05-20',
  image: 'https://example.com/img/transformers.jpg',
  author: createPerson({
    name: 'Dr. Sarah Kim',
    url: 'https://example.com/authors/sarah',
  }).toObject(),
});

Or inline as a plain object:

const article = createArticle({
  headline: 'Understanding Transformer Architecture',
  datePublished: '2025-05-20',
  image: 'https://example.com/img/transformers.jpg',
  author: { '@type': 'Person', name: 'Dr. Sarah Kim' },
});

---

Cross-Referencing with @graph

Use @id to reference the same Person across multiple schemas on a page:

import { createGraph, createPerson, createArticle, createProfilePage } from 'schemaorg-kit';

const graph = createGraph([
  createPerson({
    '@id': 'https://example.com/#sarah',
    name: 'Dr. Sarah Kim',
    image: 'https://example.com/photos/sarah.jpg',
    sameAs: ['https://twitter.com/sarahkim_ml'],
  }),
  createArticle({
    headline: 'Understanding Transformer Architecture',
    datePublished: '2025-05-20',
    image: 'https://example.com/img/transformers.jpg',
    author: { '@id': 'https://example.com/#sarah' },
  }),
]);

---

Interaction Statistics

Track a person’s engagement metrics for ProfilePage or Discussion Forum contexts:

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

const creator = createPerson({
  name: 'Alex Rivera',
  url: 'https://forum.example.com/u/alexr',
  interactionStatistic: [
    InteractionCounterSchema.parse({
      interactionType: 'https://schema.org/WriteAction',
      userInteractionCount: 342,
    }),
    InteractionCounterSchema.parse({
      interactionType: 'https://schema.org/LikeAction',
      userInteractionCount: 1580,
    }),
  ],
  agentInteractionStatistic: InteractionCounterSchema.parse({
    interactionType: 'https://schema.org/WriteAction',
    userInteractionCount: 342,
  }),
});

---

Key Fields

Field	Type	Notes
name	string	Full name
jobTitle	string?	Job title or role
url	string?	Profile/bio page URL
image	string \| ImageObject?	Profile photo
sameAs	string \| string[]?	Social profiles — critical for Knowledge Panel
worksFor	Organization?	Current employer
knowsAbout	string \| string[]?	Topics of expertise
honorificPrefix	string?	Dr., Prof., Mr., etc.
email	string?	Contact email

---

Best Practices

• Always include sameAs — Google uses it to verify identity and connect profiles across platforms
• Link to Wikipedia when available — strongest signal for Knowledge Panel eligibility
• Use consistent name values across all your structured data — don’t alternate between “Sarah Kim” and “S. Kim”
• Include image — Google may use it in author byline features

---

Common Mistakes

Don’t create a Person node without connecting it to something. A standalone Person has limited value. Use it as author, director, performer, mainEntity, etc.

For maximum Google coverage, pair Person with a ProfilePage on author bio pages, and reference the same @id in all articles by that author.