OG:type article vs website for Individual Web Pages That Are Not Articles

Question

I'm seeking clarification regarding the use of og:type article vs website for an individual web page that is technically not an "article" but also does not represent an entire website.

Documentation seems contradictory:

From https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraphprotocol/#types

Use article for any URL that represents transient content - such as a news article, blog post, photo, video, etc. Do not use website for this purpose. website and blog are designed to represent an entire site, an  og:type tag with types website or blog should usually only appear on the  root of a domain. 

In this case, article should only be used for "transient" content. The definition of "transient" is "lasting only for a short time". This quote also implicitly says "website and blog are designed to represent an entire site...(and) should usually only appear on the root of a domain."

EDIT: Interestingly, the same page describing types also says:

If your URL is a video, you should set og:type to video. 

Which, in and of itself, contradicts the quote above regarding video.

Back on subject, however, higher up, the same page also says:

If your URL is a piece of content — such as a news article, photo, or  similar — you should set og:type to article (see below). 

This seems to concur with the first quote.

Furthermore, the following page (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/technical-guides/opengraph/built-in-objects/#article) shows using og:type = article in conjunction with Publish Time, Expiration Time, and Author, which support the idea that it should be used for pages that have "articles" on them. On the same page, the website example supports a usage indicating an entire website is the object being defined.

However, from the Open Graph protocol website:

http://ogp.me/#types

Any non-marked up webpage should be treated as og:type website. 

This quote seems to indicate a best practice that a "webpage," which I assume refers to an individual webpage that may exist within the context of a website with many pages, should be treated as og:type website. That seemingly contradicts the above statements.

To make matters more complicated, neither addresses a common real-world scenario in which the content of a single web page within a website is not an article, blog entry, or some similarly "dated" or "transient" content, but rather long term content that is also not directly represented by any other og:type.

For example, an FAQ page on a website. What type is it? What about a page featuring an explanation of services offered by a company? Or a page describing a company's mission statement and methods of doing business? Or a marketing page describing the benefits of a product or service but does not actually directly represent the product or service, which is left to the product detail page.

Despite the Open Graph protocol website's statement, it seems that, if we want these pages to each have unique LIKE buttons, "website" is not the right og:type.

However, the content on these pages would not typically be described as "transient/temporary" and are not dated or associated with a specific author, so it seems that "article" is also not the right og:type.

But, it would seem that those are our only two options. The odd thing is that I cannot find a shred of discussion about this very gray topic anywhere. No clarification. No best practices. Articles that mention the og:type only do so very sparingly, and most refer the reader to the "list of Open Graph object types" to learn more.

It also seems that getting the type correct is critical because there are potential consequences for getting it wrong.

So, does anybody know what type Facebook wants these types of individual page objects to be? Has anybody seen any discussion about this? What is everybody else doing?

Thanks! Fritz

Answer 1

In my experience, the difference between 'article' and 'website' is related to how Facebook uses the 'like'. A 'like' of a page with type website will appear in the section of the user's profile where it lists their likes; a 'like' of a page with type article does not. A user's like of an 'article' object is more likely to be displayed to friends in their newsfeeds (although, as of now, even an article, without a comment, is pretty unlikely to make it into a newsfeed item, unless there are strong reasons-- topic of mutual interest, very frequent interaction between the users-- to make the item surface in Facebook's algorithm).