Structured data: introducing your business to AI

When a person visits your site, they glance at your logo, address and list of services and immediately understand who you are. For a machine it is not that easy. It has to guess that the number next to “Tel:” is a phone number, whether the address at the bottom is the head office or a warehouse, and who the person described as “our founder” actually is.

Structured data removes that guesswork. In this article we explain what structured data is, which types matter most for businesses, give a short example, and set realistic expectations about its effect on AI.

What is structured data?

Structured data means labelling the information on your page with a standard vocabulary. The most common vocabulary is schema.org. Started jointly by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex, it defines types such as “Organization”, “LocalBusiness”, “Service” and “Person”, along with properties such as “name”, “address” and “telephone”.

Google describes this markup as explicit clues about the meaning of a page and, in most cases, recommends the JSON-LD format. JSON-LD sits in a separate <script> block without touching the visible part of the page, which also makes it easy to maintain.

The types that matter for businesses

Organization and LocalBusiness

The basic type that says who you are. Organization suits a corporate entity, while LocalBusiness or one of its subtypes suits a business serving customers at a physical address. schema.org has more specific subtypes such as LegalService, MedicalClinic and Store. Pick the one closest to what you do.

According to Google’s Organization documentation, this markup helps Google better understand your organisation’s administrative details and tell you apart from organisations with similar names in search results. Logo information also helps it understand which logo to show in search results and knowledge panels.

Service

For describing the services you offer one by one. On each service page you can state the service name, a short description, the organisation providing it and the area served. When an AI looks for an answer to “Does this company offer service X?”, clear information like this helps.

FAQPage

If a page genuinely has a question-and-answer section, you can mark it up with FAQPage. One caveat: Google now shows the FAQ rich result only for well-known, authoritative government and health websites. So for most business sites it makes no visual difference in search results. It can still be used as a way to present questions and answers in machine-readable form. Do not put an FAQ in the markup that does not appear on the page.

Person

For a founder, author or specialist. In guides, stating who the author is, where they work and which profiles they have relates to the experience and trust signals Google calls E-E-A-T.

sameAs: joining up scattered traces

AI does not know you from a single page. It builds a picture of you as an entity by combining your website, your LinkedIn page, your Google Business Profile, your directory listing and your name on a news site. Do these sources describe the same company, or two different companies with similar names? The most direct way to settle that question is the sameAs property.

schema.org defines sameAs as the URL of a reference web page that unambiguously indicates the item’s identity, for example its Wikipedia page, Wikidata entry or official website. For businesses this usually means social media accounts, official registrations and directory profiles.

There is one condition for it to work: the information on those pages has to be consistent. If the LinkedIn page you link with sameAs shows your old address and the directory listing shows your old trading name, structured data won’t clear up the confusion. It will just connect the confusing sources to each other.

A short JSON-LD example

The example below is for a fictional manufacturing company. It does not belong to any real business.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "LocalBusiness",
  "@id": "https://www.example.com/#organization",
  "name": "Example Machinery Ltd",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/",
  "logo": "https://www.example.com/logo.png",
  "telephone": "+90 212 000 00 00",
  "foundingDate": "2004",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "Organised Industrial Zone, 5th Street No: 12",
    "addressLocality": "Başakşehir",
    "addressRegion": "Istanbul",
    "postalCode": "34490",
    "addressCountry": "TR"
  },
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.linkedin.com/company/example-machinery",
    "https://www.youtube.com/@examplemachinery"
  ],
  "makesOffer": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "itemOffered": {
      "@type": "Service",
      "name": "Stainless steel tank manufacturing",
      "areaServed": "TR"
    }
  }
}
</script>

A few notes:

• @id gives the organisation a stable identifier. By referring to the same identifier on other pages, you can tie the whole site to a single entity.
• Every piece of information here should also be visible on the page. Google expects structured data to match the visible content.
• The name, address and phone should match your Google Business Profile.

How to test it

Two free tools are enough:

• Rich Results Test (Google). Paste your page URL or code and it shows which rich results the page is eligible for and any errors. It checks Google-specific rules.
• Schema Markup Validator (schema.org). It validates your markup against the schema.org vocabulary. Because it also checks types Google does not support as rich results, it is useful for general validation.

Once the markup is live, the relevant reports in Google Search Console also flag errors over time.

The effect on AI: an honest answer

It is easy to overstate this, so let’s not.

• There is no direct guarantee. Google states clearly that no special schema.org markup is needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Adding structured data will not make AI start mentioning you.
• Other AI companies do not explain in detail how they use structured data. If you hear someone speak with certainty on this, ask for their source.
• But it does make you unambiguous. Structured data is the way to state who you are, where you are and what you do without leaving room for doubt. Search engines understanding you correctly is part of the infrastructure AI tools are built on. This clarity helps with problems such as being confused with similarly named companies or having an old address used.

Our approach: we don’t treat structured data as a magic key, but as one of a site’s basic housekeeping tasks. Once set up correctly it needs little maintenance, and the benefit is long-term.

Where to start

1. Add Organization or LocalBusiness markup to your home page. Name, address, phone, logo and sameAs are a good start.
2. Check the information on the pages you link with sameAs and fix any inconsistencies.
3. Add Service markup to each service page.
4. Test with the Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator.
5. If you have an author or founder page, add Person.

If you would like us to check your site’s existing structured data and consistency, fill in the free analysis form. This is also one of the first steps of our visibility service.