structured data
Machine-readable metadata embedded in a page that describes its entities — consumed by search and AI engines.
Definition
Structured data is metadata embedded in a web page that describes what the page is about in a vocabulary that crawlers can parse without inference. The dominant vocabulary is schema.org; the dominant syntax is JSON-LD. Common types: Article, FAQPage, Product, Organization, BreadcrumbList. Google rich results, AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Bing Copilot all consume structured data to source citations.
When to use
Add structured data to any page where the content fits a recognizable schema.org type. The cost is low (one JSON-LD block) and the citation upside in AI search is high.
See also
- JSON-LD — JSON for Linking Data — the JSON syntax for embedding schema.org structured data in a web page.
- schema.org — Open vocabulary for structured data on the web, co-maintained by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex.
- AI Overviews — Google Search's AI-generated answer block at the top of results pages, sourced from indexed structured data.