Schema markup is structured code added to a page so search engines and AI tools understand what each part of the content represents - an address, a price, opening hours, a question and answer. Google recommends the JSON-LD format, and the vocabulary of over 800 types is maintained by schema.org.
A person seeing "08:00-17:00" on a page immediately knows these are opening hours. A machine sees only text. Schema markup is the way to state that unambiguously instead of leaving the search engine to guess from context.
The consequence is practical: a page with correct schema has a better chance of appearing as a card in Maps, with a rating in results, or as a source in an AI answer - because the system knows what is what rather than having to infer it.
LocalBusiness for local companies - address, phone, opening hours, coordinates. The foundation of local SEO and the most important type for businesses serving one city.
Service and Product for services and products, with price and availability. FAQPage for questions and answers. BreadcrumbList for the path through the site.
Article for written content, with an author and a modification date. DefinedTerm for glossary entries - a type AI tools often use when building an answer to "what is".
JSON-LD is inserted as a block inside <script type="application/ld+json"> and changes nothing visible on the page. That is also its advantage - it does not touch the design and cannot break the layout.
Several types can be combined into one block through @graph, which is tidier than five separate scripts. Each entity gets an @id so it can be referenced from other pages.
The most common is a mismatch between the schema and the visible content. If the schema says one phone number and the page shows another, that is not merely untidy - Google starts ignoring the data.
The second is expecting schema to deliver rankings on its own. It does not. It aids understanding and opens the door to richer displays, but it does not replace content.
The third is an outdated expectation of FAQ markup. Google withdrew FAQ rich results for most sites in August 2023, so that markup no longer produces a visible gain in classic search - though it remains useful as material for AI answers.
Correctness is checked with the Google Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator.
Schema does not change positions, but it changes how the result looks. For products a price and availability may show, for services a rating and review count, for recipes preparation time - depending on what Google currently supports.
The list of supported displays shifts over time and is worth checking before investing in markup that no longer yields anything. The FAQ display is the obvious example: until 2023 it was among the most useful, and today it appears for only a minority of sites.
For local businesses the most concrete gain is not a richer snippet but the Maps card with an accurate address, opening hours and phone number. That comes from the Google Business Profile and LocalBusiness schema confirming each other.
In AI search the role of schema is growing. When a tool assembles an answer, structured data gives it verifiable facts - a name, an address, a price - instead of extracting them from prose and risking an error.
Last updated: 17 August 2026
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