Structured Data (Schema Markup)
Machine-readable markup (usually JSON-LD) that labels page content so engines can understand it and show rich results.
Structured data is standardized, machine-readable markup — most commonly JSON-LD following the schema.org vocabulary — that explicitly labels what content on a page means: this is a Product with this price, this is an Article by this author, these are FAQ questions and answers. It doesn't change what a human sees; it makes the meaning unambiguous to machines.
Its most visible payoff is rich results: star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, recipe cards, breadcrumb trails and similar enhancements that can make a listing stand out. It also helps search engines and AI systems parse a page more confidently, which can feed answer boxes and citations.
Structured data must accurately describe content that's actually visible on the page; marking up content that isn't there, or using review markup you're not entitled to, is a spam violation that can lose you rich results entirely. It's a way to describe good content precisely, not a ranking shortcut on its own.
Related terms
- AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) — Structuring content so answer engines can lift a direct answer from it — for featured snippets, voice results and AI answers.
- AI Overviews — Google's AI-generated summary at the top of some results. You can be cited but not paid for placement, and only if you're indexed.
- E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust) — Google's quality framework: content should show real experience, expertise, authority and trust. Not a score, but a lens.
- Meta Description — A page's summary tag. Not a ranking factor, but it often becomes the search snippet, so it drives click-through.