Schema.org Releases Action Markups

Schema.org announced a new type of markup designed to help you describe actions that have taken place in the past or the future. The new structured data is called Action and all the major search engines are getting behind the new markup by having representatives from Google, Microsoft, Yandex and Yahoo jointly sign the announcement which describes the Action markup as.

"vocabulary that enables websites to describe the actions they enable and how these actions can be invoked."

The uses for the Action markups will vary by business but in an interview that took place at SearchEngineLand a Bing spokesperson described its potential use like this.

"Let's assume Jason shared an MSN article on Facebook yesterday. This is an example of a past action. Facebook might use schema.org to describe the action by indicating that Jason is the subject (agent) of the action, the action verb is sharing, and the object of the action is an MSN article. Now let's say MSN wanted to expose the ability for applications to programmatically share an article on their website. This would be an example of a potential action. MSN might use schema.org to describe the potential action by indicating the action verb is 'sharing' and that you can perform this action by calling a specific URL."

The new Action markups will allow you to describe the performer of an action, the start and end times, the entry point, the type of action taking place or having taken place and even the desired outcome to name a few. The full list of Action markups are located here.