Structured data

Structured data is code added to a page that describes its content in a standard format machines can read, such as the name of a company, the price of a product or the author of an article. Google defines it as "a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content." Most structured data for Google Search uses the schema.org vocabulary, and Google recommends the JSON-LD format in most cases.

What it does for AI search

Google says structured data isn't required for generative AI search, and that there's no special schema.org markup you need to add to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode (Google Search Central). It still helps Google understand who you are. Organization markup can help Google understand your organization's administrative details and disambiguate it in search results, and its sameAs property links to your profiles on other sites. That supports a clear entity: the same company, described the same way, everywhere.

Markup must match the page. Google's guidelines say structured data "must be a true representation of the page content," and that you shouldn't mark up content that isn't visible to readers.

Example

Organization markup for a fictional project management tool:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "Tallyfield",
  "url": "https://tallyfield.example",
  "logo": "https://tallyfield.example/logo.png",
  "description": "Project management for creative agencies",
  "sameAs": ["https://social.example/tallyfield"]
}

Validate the markup, then check that the name and description match your home page, your About page and the profiles listed in sameAs. If they disagree, engines have several versions of your company to choose from.