How can structured data identify an entity merely mentioned in an article?

Definition: Schema.org's mentions property indicates that a CreativeWork contains a reference to a concept without making that concept the work's subject. Add it to an article and give it a Thing value that identifies the referenced entity.

Key facts

• Schema.org defines mentions as a property for a CreativeWork that contains a reference to a concept. The concept is not necessarily what the work is about. Schema.org's mentions definition
• The property's expected value type is Thing, and its domain is CreativeWork. Schema.org's mentions definition
• Schema.org defines about as the subject matter of an object. Its mentions property is therefore the narrower choice when an article refers to an entity without making it the subject. Schema.org's CreativeWork definition
• JSON-LD identifies a node with the @id keyword, allowing the value of mentions to point to an IRI for the entity. W3C's JSON-LD 1.1 specification
• Google's Article documentation lists Article, NewsArticle, and BlogPosting as the Schema.org types for its Article objects. Google's Article structured data documentation

How should mentions be represented?

Put mentions on the object that represents the article. The value is a Thing, so it can be a typed object with a name and an identifier. In JSON-LD, @type supplies the entity type and @id supplies its IRI. A stable, entity-specific URL is preferable to a bare label when one is available because the JSON-LD specification describes an IRI as the identifier of a node that can be dereferenced to a representation of that node.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "A history of early computing",
  "mentions": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "@id": "https://example.com/entities/ada-lovelace",
    "name": "Ada Lovelace"
  }
}

The example uses an object because it carries both the entity's type and its identifier. Multiple referenced entities can be represented as multiple mentions values in a JSON-LD array. Schema.org's range is Thing, whose more specific types include Person, Organization, and Place.

How is a mention different from the article's subject?

Schema.org defines about as the subject matter of an object, while mentions covers a reference contained in the work. For an article about a person, use about for that central subject. For an article about a period, product, or event that also names the person, use mentions for the person when the person is a referenced concept. The two properties can appear on the same CreativeWork when the article has both relationships.

citation is a separate CreativeWork property. Schema.org describes it as a citation or reference to another creative work, such as a publication, web page, or scholarly article. Use citation when the relationship is to the referenced work itself. Use mentions when the relationship describes a concept referred to inside the article.

What does Google document for an article?

As of 8 September 2026, Google's Article documentation says that Article objects must be based on Article, NewsArticle, or BlogPosting. It lists author, author.name, author.url, dateModified, datePublished, headline, and image as recommended properties. mentions is a Schema.org vocabulary property, but it is not in that documented list of Google-supported Article properties.

Google also says there are no required properties for this feature, asks site owners to validate structured data with the Rich Results Test, and recommends using URL Inspection to test how Google sees a page. Those instructions concern Google's Article documentation and testing process. Schema.org's mentions definition supplies the relationship semantics; it does not describe a separate search result feature for that relationship.

Related terms

• Structured data
• Schema.org @id
• Schema.org citation property
• Entity linking

FAQ

Should mentions contain a string or an entity object?

Use an entity object when you have an identifier and a type to provide. A string gives a label; an object with @type, @id, and name expresses the referenced entity as a JSON-LD node.

Can an article use both about and mentions?

Yes. Use about for the subject matter and mentions for a concept referred to in the work. Schema.org assigns both properties to CreativeWork.

Does mentions make an article eligible for a Google Article result?

Google's Article documentation lists the Article types and its recommended properties. It does not list mentions as a Google-supported Article property, so the Schema.org relationship alone is not a documented eligibility condition.

Sources

1. Schema.org, "mentions", 16 September 2026
2. Schema.org, "CreativeWork", 16 September 2026
3. W3C, "JSON-LD 1.1", 16 July 2020
4. Google Search Central, "Article (Article, NewsArticle, BlogPosting) structured data", 8 September 2026

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