What is structured data?
Structured data is machine-readable markup added to a page, usually as JSON-LD following schema.org vocabulary, that states explicitly what the page is about.
A page's HTML says how content should look. Structured data says what it means: that this string is a price, that one is an author, that this block is a question and the next is its answer. Search engines and answer engines read it because it removes guesswork.
Why it matters
Most structured data is valid and changes nothing. The types worth the effort on support content are few and specific. FAQPage can produce expandable questions directly in a result. Organization consolidates the name, logo and contact details a search engine shows in a knowledge panel. BreadcrumbList replaces a raw URL in the result with a readable path. Article and WebPage on an ordinary page are almost always correct, almost always ignored, and not worth arguing about. Adding markup that does not correspond to visible content is the one genuinely risky move — it is a manual-action offence, not a neutral experiment.
Examples
- An FAQ page marked up so its questions appear as expandable rows in search.
- Organization markup that gets the right logo next to the brand name.
- Product markup claiming a review count the page does not display, which is a penalty waiting to happen.
Not the same as
Meta tags
Meta tags describe the page as a whole in a fixed, tiny vocabulary. Structured data describes the things on it, in a large one.
Related
term
What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?
Search increasingly returns synthesised answers rather than links. AEO is the unglamorous work of making sure the facts about your business — what it is, who it's for, what it costs — are stated plainly enough to be quoted correctly.
term
What is FAQ schema?
It is the most immediately useful markup on a support-content page, because the format matches how customers search. Someone typing a full question into a search box is asking for exactly what an FAQ block contains, and marking it up removes the engine's need to infer that the page holds the answer.
term
What is zero-click search?
Featured snippets, knowledge panels and AI-generated summaries all answer questions in place. The share of searches ending this way has been rising for a decade and accelerated sharply once search engines started generating summaries rather than only quoting them.
term
What is FAQ schema?
It is the most immediately useful markup on a support-content page, because the format matches how customers search. Someone typing a full question into a search box is asking for exactly what an FAQ block contains, and marking it up removes the engine's need to infer that the page holds the answer.
term
What is zero-click search?
Featured snippets, knowledge panels and AI-generated summaries all answer questions in place. The share of searches ending this way has been rising for a decade and accelerated sharply once search engines started generating summaries rather than only quoting them.
term
What is llms.txt?
The idea borrows its shape from robots.txt and sitemap.xml but answers a different question. A sitemap says what exists. llms.txt says what matters — a curated, annotated list of the pages a machine reader should start from, written in plain markdown with a sentence explaining each.
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