Knowledge
Invisible to people. Central for machines.
Structured data tells a machine what a page is: a restaurant with opening hours, a hotel with an address, a product with a price, an FAQ. Google uses it for rich results, answer engines for classification. Without it the machine has to guess.
Updated: 22 August 2026
What structured data is
schema.org is a shared vocabulary by Google, Microsoft and others: types like Organization, Product or Event with defined properties. JSON-LD is the notation for it - a JSON block in the source that people never see and machines read first.
Which types matter for which business
- Every business: Organization or LocalBusiness with address, phone, opening hours, area served.
- Restaurants: Restaurant with cuisine, price range, reservation link.
- Hotels: Hotel or LodgingBusiness with amenities and booking link.
- Shops: Product with Offer (price, availability) - the precondition for product rich results.
- Service providers: Service with serviceType and areaServed.
- Everyone: FAQPage for real questions on the page, BreadcrumbList for navigation.
What Google makes of it - and what it does not
Rich results - stars, prices, FAQ expanders, breadcrumbs in the results list - require structured data. They are not a direct ranking factor but raise visibility and click-through. Important: the data must match the visible content. An FAQ in the schema that is not on the page is a violation.
Answer engines use the same types to classify a business: what it is, where it is, what it offers. The combination of plain text on the page and JSON-LD in the head is what makes it citable.
Common questions
Do I need a plugin for that?
Not necessarily. On WordPress, SEO plugins generate basic schemas; specific types like Restaurant or Service with real data are better written by hand - ten lines per page, built cleanly once.How do I check whether my site has structured data?
Google's Rich Results Test shows types and errors. Our analyzer reads the source and reports missing or present JSON-LD types in a minute.
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