Data-vocabulary.org for structured markup in 2019

[bbop33]

Hi MOZ friends,

One of our clients has used data-vocabulary.org for structured markup.

Schema.org  says:

"If you are already publishing structured data markup and it is already being used by Google, Microsoft, Yandex or Yahoo!, the markup format will generally continue to be supported. Changing to the new markup format could be helpful over time because you will be switching to a standard that is accepted across several companies, but you don't have to do it."

Although there is such statement, as schema.org is the common vocabulary in 2019, should I keep it or change it with schema.org?

Thanks in advance!

[bbop33]

Thank you very much for the answer Martijn.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

If you have the resources available and don't have many other priorities. It could be worth it to switch over, but honestly, if I would be in the situation and have many other things to change as well I wouldn't make this a priority. In the end, you're already benefiting from most of the upsides with data-vocabulary and Schema.org isn't going to get you much more. It will likely be a good thing for the future to move over as most of the new extensions are becoming available for Schema.org, but if you have very little upside I wouldn't make the migration right away.

[DarinPirkey]

Not sure how you run your agency or whatever but generally for changes like this I like to "task" them out.  Meaning that I will always move to the preferred version of things over time.  Let's say your client has 500 pages, can you do 50 pages a month with the correct version of schema?  Start with the most important pages on the site and move from there.  If you can't get to the pages that need updated in month three, you'll still be ok. I think the search engines will be able to read the data regardless but always like to move towards the preferred version of things.  It's a "best practice" in a way. Just organize the pages by either traffic, importance, or relevance and go from there.  No need to rush it.  But definitely something I would move towards.