Structured data is a machine-readable description of what a page is about: the company behind it, the service it offers, the person who wrote it, the date it was published. It helps search engines understand your site, and search engines feed many AI answers. It is worth doing properly. It is not, on its own, a way to get recommended.
What structured data is
Structured data uses the schema.org vocabulary, usually written as JSON-LD in a script tag in the page. It states facts in a fixed format: this organisation is called X, is based in London, was founded in 2025, and has these social profiles. Google's documentation recommends JSON-LD and uses it for rich results and for understanding entities.
How it relates to AI answers
Be careful with strong claims here. Google has said that its AI features rely on the same systems as Search, and that structured data should match the visible content of the page. Structured data helps those systems understand pages, and that understanding carries into AI Overviews and AI Mode.
For other assistants the picture is less clear. When ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity read a page during live search, the evidence that they give JSON-LD special weight is limited. What they certainly read is the visible text. So treat structured data as one clear statement of your facts among several, not a channel that bypasses content.
The practical value, in our experience, is consistency. Writing your company facts into structured data forces you to settle them: one name, one founding date, one description, one set of profiles. That same discipline, applied to your visible pages and external listings, is what AI assistants respond to.
The markup worth having
Organization (or a more specific type)
On your home page or site-wide: name, legal name, URL, logo, description, founding date, address, contact point and sameAs links to your official profiles. If you are a local business or professional service, use the more specific type, such as ProfessionalService or LocalBusiness. Give the organisation an @id so other markup can refer to it.
Person
For founders, authors and key staff: name, job title, the organisation they work for and links to their professional profiles. This supports the "who is behind this" question that matters for trust.
Service and Offer
For each main service: what it is, who provides it and the area served. Include price information only if it is real and public.
Article or BlogPosting
For guides and articles: headline, author, publisher, datePublished and dateModified. Keep dateModified honest; changing it without changing the content misleads readers and search engines.
FAQPage
For pages that genuinely contain questions and answers. Google limited FAQ rich results to a small set of authoritative government and health sites in 2023, so do not expect visual changes in search results. The markup still describes the structure of the content clearly.
BreadcrumbList
Shows where a page sits in your site. Simple to add and useful for understanding site structure.
Implementation rules
- Markup must match the page. Do not describe things in structured data that a visitor cannot see on the page.
- Server-render it. Markup injected by JavaScript after load may not be seen by crawlers that do not run scripts.
- One entity, one name. Use the same company name everywhere. Put alternatives in alternateName.
- Validate. Test pages with Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator after every template change.
- Do not invent ratings. Self-written review markup on your own pages is against Google's guidelines for most business types.
A simple Organization example
Frequently Asked Questions
Does schema markup make ChatGPT recommend my company?
Not by itself. Structured data helps search engines understand your site and keeps your facts consistent, but recommendations depend mainly on what your visible content says and whether independent sources agree.
Which schema types matter most for AEO?
Organization (or a specific type such as ProfessionalService), Person for founders and authors, Service for your offers, and Article for guides. These describe who you are and what you do, which are the facts AI answers depend on.
Is FAQ schema still worth adding?
Only on pages that genuinely contain questions and answers. Google shows FAQ rich results for very few sites, but the markup still describes the content accurately.
Should structured data be added with a tag manager?
It is better to render it in the page's HTML on the server. Markup added by JavaScript may be missed by crawlers that do not execute scripts.