Short answer
Structured data is machine-readable markup, usually JSON-LD following the schema.org vocabulary, that states explicitly what a page is about: that this string is a price, that one an opening time, this entity the organisation publishing the page. It removes the guesswork search engines and language models would otherwise apply to raw HTML.
Also called: Schema markup, JSON-LD, Rich results markup
The practical value is disambiguation rather than ranking. Structured data is not a ranking factor in its own right, and marking up a thin page does not make it rank. What it does is make facts unambiguous and connectable: a consistent @id for your organisation across every page merges dozens of look-alike mentions into one resolvable entity, which is the foundation of how engines decide that two pages describe the same business.
The binding constraint is accuracy. Markup must describe content the visitor can actually see. Marking up a price the page does not show, or reviews that were never left, is a policy violation and — for an answer engine that cross-checks against the rendered page — an active trust penalty.
Common questions
Does structured data improve rankings?
Not directly. It makes a page eligible for rich result formats and makes its facts unambiguous to machines, which can lift click-through and helps answer engines resolve your business as one entity. It does not raise a page’s position on its own, and it cannot compensate for thin content.
Are FAQ rich results still shown?
Google retired FAQ rich results for most sites, so the visible star-and-accordion treatment in search results is largely gone. FAQPage markup is still worth keeping — it remains parseable by answer engines — but the value now sits in the visible question-and-answer content itself rather than in the SERP feature.
Where this comes up in our work
Related terms
Entity SEO
Entity SEO is the practice of making a search engine resolve a business, person or product as one distinct thing rather than a set of unconnected mentions.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Answer engine optimization is the practice of structuring content so that AI answer engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, Google AI Overviews — cite it inside their generated answers.
E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust)
E-E-A-T is the framework in Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines used to judge content quality: demonstrated first-hand Experience, subject Expertise, recognised Authoritativeness, and Trust.
Local SEO
Local SEO is optimisation for searches with geographic intent — queries naming a city, or carrying implicit "near me" intent.
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