Schema markup (structured data)

How it works

Schema.org is a shared vocabulary started in 2011 by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, with Yandex joining later that year. You describe the page in a block of JSON-LD: this page is a Service, provided by this Organization, with this price range; this article has this author and this modified date. Google recommends JSON-LD over the older inline formats, Microdata and RDFa, for most sites.

The markup must match what a visitor can see. Google's structured data guidelines treat markup that describes content missing from the page as a policy violation, and it can cost a site its rich result eligibility.

How businesses use it

For a service business, a small set of types does most of the work:

• Organization on the home page, with name, logo, contact details and sameAs links to real profiles.
• Service on each service page, with the provider and a price range if you publish one.
• Article with a Person author on guides and posts.
• BreadcrumbList on inner pages.

Check the output with Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator at schema.org.

Structured data still earns some rich results in Google, such as breadcrumbs and product details. It also gives search engines and AI systems an unambiguous statement of who you are and what you sell, which supports entity SEO.

Where it goes wrong

Schema markup does not get you into AI answers on its own. Google states that no special schema is needed for AI Overviews or AI Mode (AI features documentation (opens in a new tab)).

Rich results also come and go. Google retired HowTo rich results in 2023 and stopped showing FAQ rich results on May 7, 2026, so FAQPage markup no longer produces a special result in Google. Keep visible FAQs if they help readers, and treat that markup as optional.

The most common failure is drift: prices or names updated on the page but not in the markup. Generate the JSON-LD from the same data as the visible page so the two cannot disagree.