kweri

Field Guide

Structured Data

Structured data is code you add to a page that tells search engines and AI answer engines exactly what your content is about — making it significantly more likely to be cited, featured in rich results, or extracted as a direct answer.

Why it matters for your site

Search engines use structured data to generate rich results — FAQ accordions, star ratings, event listings, and knowledge panels that appear before a user even clicks. Pages with relevant structured data consistently outperform equivalent pages without it for these placements.

AI answer engines (Perplexity, ChatGPT with search, Google AI Overviews) are specifically trained to look for schema signals when deciding what to cite. A page with FAQPage schema is more likely to have its questions-and-answers extracted verbatim than a page with the same content but no schema.

Without structured data, a search engine or AI tool has to infer what your page is about from prose alone. That's slower, less precise, and means your content competes on raw text matching rather than on declared intent — a meaningful disadvantage as AI-generated answers become the primary search surface.

How to check it yourself

  1. Open Google's Rich Results Test (search.google.com/test/rich-results) and enter your URL. It shows what structured data was detected, whether it's valid, and which rich result types your page is eligible for.
  2. The most impactful schemas for most sites: Organisation (defines your business entity), WebSite (enables the sitelinks search box), Article or BlogPosting (for editorial content), and FAQPage (for question-and-answer content — the most directly cited by AI engines).
  3. If you use WordPress, plugins like Yoast SEO or RankMath generate basic schema automatically. For custom-built sites, JSON-LD is the recommended format: it lives in a <script type='application/ld+json'> tag and doesn't require changes to your visible HTML.
  4. The Kweri audit checks for the presence and type of JSON-LD schema. The AI-Readiness section of your report shows whether structured data was found and, if so, whether it includes the content types AI engines specifically draw on.

Technical detail

Schema.org is the shared vocabulary. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex jointly developed it, and all major search engines support it. The vocabulary defines types (Article, FAQPage, Product, Person, Organisation) and their properties.

JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is the preferred format. It lives in a <script type='application/ld+json'> tag, is invisible to visitors, and doesn't require changes to your HTML structure — making it the easiest format to add and maintain.

A FAQPage schema should include a mainEntity array of Question items, each with an acceptedAnswer. AI engines that process FAQ schema can extract these pairs and use them as direct answers, improving citation accuracy compared to prose content alone.

The Kweri check looks for JSON-LD <script> blocks, extracts the @type values, and flags pages with no schema, or with schema that lacks the content types (Article, BlogPosting, FAQPage, HowTo) AI engines actively draw on.

For the primary specification and implementation guide, see Google — Structured data documentation →

For the FAQPage implementation guide and requirements, see Google — FAQPage schema →

Related

Plain Language & Readability

Plain, direct language is understood faster and trusted more — jargon and complexity are barriers.

Narrative Processing (Story vs. List)

Content structured as a story is processed as if lived, engaging far more of the brain than lists or facts — and is retained longer.

See Structured Data on your own site

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