Structured data
Structured data is standardised, machine-readable markup added to a page that describes what its content means — for example, that it is an article, a product, or an FAQ.
Most structured data on the web follows the schema.org vocabulary, usually in JSON-LD. It helps search engines produce rich results and helps AI engines correctly identify and use your content — a small, high-leverage part of both SEO and GEO.
How it works
Structured data can be written as JSON-LD, Microdata or RDFa; JSON-LD, a separate script block, is the format Google recommends because it does not have to be woven into the visible HTML. Each block declares a type from the schema.org vocabulary and properties describing the page's content. Google's Rich Results Test and Search Console report whether it is valid and eligible for enhanced results.
Eligibility is not a guarantee: engines decide per query whether to show a rich result.
Example
An article page can declare its headline, author, publication and modified dates, and a breadcrumb trail. Search Console then reports the breadcrumbs as detected, and the result can show a path like "troiana.net › Insights" instead of a bare URL.
Common mistakes
- Describing content in the markup that visitors cannot see on the page.
- Leaving dates hard-coded so the markup says a page was last modified months ago.
- Relying on markup types, such as FAQ rich results, that Google now shows only to a few kinds of sites.
