What is Structured data?

Also called schema markup, JSON-LD, rich results.

Structured data is machine-readable information embedded in a page saying what it is — a product, an FAQ, an article — so search engines can show it as more than a blue link.

In more detail

It is usually written as JSON-LD in a script tag. It does not change what a visitor sees; it changes what a crawler understands. It is also increasingly how AI assistants decide what a page is about, which makes it more valuable than when its only benefit was a star rating in results.

Why it matters for your site

The one rule that matters: the markup must match what the page actually says. Markup that contradicts the visible page is treated as a reason to distrust all of it, and can cost you rich results across the whole site rather than on one page.