Free Creative Work Schema Generator

What is CreativeWork?

On schema.org, CreativeWork is "the most generic kind of creative work, including books, movies, photographs, software programs, etc." Article, Book, Movie, Recipe, VideoObject, ImageObject, Course, Dataset, SoftwareApplication, WebPage, and Review are all subtypes of it, and they all inherit its properties.

That makes CreativeWork two things at once:

1. A type you can use directly for original work that has no closer match, such as a downloadable template, a worksheet, a slide deck, an original painting, or a report.
2. The source of properties that every subtype shares, such as author, datePublished, license, and about. Learning them here helps with every other content type.

Pick the most specific type that fits

Search engines get more from a specific type than from the general one. Before using CreativeWork, check whether one of these describes your page:

If none of them fit, CreativeWork is the right choice.

Google Search status

CreativeWork has no rich result of its own. Two things are worth knowing:

• Google's paywalled-content markup applies to CreativeWork and several of its subtypes. If part of your work is for subscribers only, mark it with isAccessibleForFree and hasPart, as in the members-only report example on this page.
• Google's rich results for content, such as articles, books, movies, recipes, and videos, are tied to the specific subtypes. Another reason to use the most specific type that fits.

Properties worth including

All of these are defined on CreativeWork, so every subtype can use them too:

• name: the title of the work.
• author or creator: the person or organization that made it. Use a Person or Organization, not a plain string, when you can.
• datePublished, dateModified, dateCreated: when it was published, last changed, and made.
• description: a short summary that matches the page.
• url and image: the work's page and a representative image.
• license: a URL pointing to the license, such as a Creative Commons page.
• about: the topic of the work.
• inLanguage: the language, as a code like en or es.
• copyrightHolder and copyrightYear: who owns the rights and since when.
• isAccessibleForFree: false if the work is behind a paywall or login.
• isPartOf and hasPart: how the work relates to a larger collection or to its sections.

How to build one here

Common mistakes

• Using CreativeWork when a subtype fits. A blog post marked as CreativeWork loses the article-specific meaning. Switch to the specific type.
• Author as a plain name only. "author": "Jordan" is valid, but a Person or Organization object with a name and URL is clearer.
• Dates that don't match the page. Keep datePublished and dateModified in sync with what visitors see.
• License as text. Use the URL of the license so it can be followed and recognized.