Nested Microdata

Question

I've create microdata for one of my client's websites using the schema.org principles.

I've structured the microdata such that the outermost level is an Organization which contains an AggregateRating (for the organization itself). Also under the organization is a Product which the organization owns.

I can use both the Bing and Google Microdata validation tools and the microdata all checks out fine. In fact it is structured just the way I expect it. You can test out the my page yourself using the Google Testing Tool.

It all looks fine but when you search using Bing for the product in question (Clothing Magnets) Search Bing for Clothing Magnets and look at the results for the PureButtons company. Find the result that references the URL:
http://www.purebuttons.com/order-promotional-products/Clothing-Magnets
You'll see that Bing is displaying the aggregate review of the company (PureButtons with 800+ reviews) not the aggregate review of the several products that have aggregate reviews on that page.

Can anyone explain how I'm supposed to use the microdata here? Should I not have the company's aggregate review on this page because it confuses matters and only include the product aggregate reviews?

Answer 1

Consumers (like Bing) use their own rules how to decide when to use which entities.
You can only give them hints which entity is the "primary" one, but you can’t explicitly control this. (Well, by including only one entity, they would have no other choice, but it’s generally a good idea to represent all relevant/visible entities on a page, not only the primary one.)

One hint could be the mainEntity property (or its reverse property, mainEntityOfPage). But note that these two properties were added last week, so even if consumers should decide to make use of them, it might still take some time.