Sorry, but the claim was this:
> Schema doesn't seem to have any benefit to anyone but Google
If that's not "the point", then the comment shouldn't have suggested that it was.
> > Schema doesn't seem to have any benefit to anyone but Google
I think the key word is "seem" here. Hypothetically, microdata could help other companies - but I don't know of any that use it.
If I have an e-commerce website that sells personalised hats and I add the shipping info microdata to it, who is going to use that other than google?
If you expect to show up generally favorably in a shopping comparison, having shipping data available would seem to be useful, since people may not want to purchase without an idea of when they'd get the items.
Of course, if you don't get purchases through those channels now, adding shipping data probably won't help.
Uh... the human on the other end that Google is relaying the information to...
However, we're in a comment thread that went
> > Schema doesn't seem to have any benefit to anyone but Google.
> I fail to see how small businesses are prevented from using metadata.
The only use case I can think of for small businesses is scraping your rivals and seeing what they're getting up to.
Your answer misses the point, which is that microdata and co profit Google first and foremost who are extracting information from 3rd parties and displaying that information on their own website or crunching them for various purposes without giving back web traffic or a cent.
Implementing micro data on public facing websites isn't cost free.