Existing structured data describes the page incorrectly

The check reads the JSON-LD blocks on every live page, including the @graph, and looks for three obvious errors that are usually added not by a person but by a template or an SEO plugin with default settings:

1. A home page or contact page marked as an article (Article, BlogPosting, NewsArticle). The check recognises the home page and the contact page by address, heading and links, ignoring the JSON-LD it is judging.
2. An author with a generic account name, such as admin, administrator or webmaster. The name is also followed through an @id reference to a person elsewhere in the graph.
3. A product without a name: a Product node with an empty or missing name property.

The finding shows exactly what the check found on the page, for example @type: "Article"; author: "admin".

What the check does not do:

• It does not judge other pages marked as an article. A service or product typed as Article is also inaccurate, but we cannot recognise it reliably from the address and heading, so we do not report it.
• It does not check whether the author's name is real, only whether it is on the list of generic account names (config/schema-jsonld.json).
• It does not validate against schema.org or look for other missing properties. Invalid JSON is reported by SCH-04, structured data missing altogether by SCH-01.
• It does not see microdata or RDFa, and it does not see blocks injected by JavaScript after load.

The microdata part needs a reason, because the other SCH-* checks have read that format since 19 September 2026. This one does not, and that is a deliberate gap, not an oversight: its three rules (a home page typed as an article, an author named after an account, a product without a name) were calibrated and measured against JSON-LD produced by SEO plugins, where the output is predictable. Extending them to microdata without the same measurement would mean passing a guess off as a check. A site with that error in microdata simply does not get this finding.

The finding is page-level; severity is warning. The check compares pages across the site (page type), so there is no “Verify fix” button for it.

The same applies here as to SCH-01: there is no evidence that structured data affects citations by AI assistants. Measurements come out within noise, and in a controlled experiment no platform used information placed only in schema.

There is a different, documented reason to fix the error. Google's general structured data guidelines require the markup to match what is actually on the page. A home page described as an article does not. For articles Google states explicitly that the author name field should contain only the author's name, and for products the name is required. The benefit of correct markup is therefore for classic search (Google, Bing), not for AI.

Schema does not replace the page content. The fix only makes sure the description of the page does not contradict what is on it.

Fix the markup where it is produced, not next to it. If a plugin adds the error and you add a manual block, the page ends up with two contradicting descriptions.

• Rank Math: according to the plugin documentation the default type for pages is Article. Change it in Rank Math SEO, Titles & Meta, Pages, the Schema Type field. For an existing page open the Rank Math panel in the editor, the Schema tab, and delete Article under Schema in Use.
• Yoast SEO: according to the documentation pages default to Web Page and only content with an author gets an article. Change the type of a single page in the Yoast SEO panel on the Schema tab (Page type Contact Page for the contact page), the defaults under Yoast SEO, Settings, Content types.
• Author “admin”: the name comes from the WordPress user account. Check the Display name publicly as field in the user profile, or move the posts to an account with a real name.
• Product without a name: add name with the same name that is visible on the page.

If the audit generated a structured data file, you will find steps for the plugin we detected on the site in it, under “Downloads”, with links to the documentation.