Schema markup: a complete guide for SEO and AI search
·4 min read
Schema markup is code, usually JSON-LD, that labels what a page contains with the schema.org vocabulary, so a search engine reads "Product, 129.00 USD, in stock" instead of guessing. Google uses schema markup to understand entities and to decide which pages are eligible for rich results such as prices and review stars. It is not a ranking signal, and Google says structured data isn't required for its AI features. Mark up what the page visibly shows, and skip types whose rich results Google has retired.
What is structured data?
Structured data is information in a fixed format a machine can read without interpreting prose. Schema markup is structured data that uses schema.org, a shared dictionary of types like Product and properties like price. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex founded it, and the project says more than 45 million domains used its markup as of 2024.
Google reads JSON-LD, Microdata and RDFa, and recommends JSON-LD. The JSON-LD guide covers the syntax.
Is schema markup an SEO ranking factor?
No. Google documents it as a way to qualify for search features, never as a ranking signal. When it retired seven rich result types in June 2025, it said ranking wasn't affected.
What markup does is make a page eligible for a richer listing and help Google connect your company to its entities, which can feed a knowledge panel. Eligibility isn't a promise. Google's guidelines say it may show a plain result even when the markup is valid.
Which rich results Google still shows in 2026
Google's Search Gallery lists 25 features as of June 2026. The useful ones for most sites are Article, Breadcrumb, Event, Local business, Organization, Product, Recipe, Review snippet, Software app and Video. Breadcrumbs have shown on desktop only since January 2025.
These are retired, per the Search Central changelog:
| Rich result | Markup | Status |
|---|---|---|
| FAQ | FAQPage |
Shown for no site since May 7, 2026 |
| How-to | HowTo |
Removed September 2023 |
| Sitelinks search box | SearchAction |
Removed November 2024 |
| Fact check, Course info, Estimated salary, Learning video, Vehicle listing | ClaimReview, Course, Occupation, LearningResource, Car |
Phased out from June 2025 |
| Practice problems | Quiz |
Phased out November 2025 |
Retired markup does no harm, Google said when it dropped the sitelinks search box. Keep your WebSite node, since site names still use it. The FAQ schema post covers whether FAQ markup is still worth keeping.
Does schema markup help with AI search?
Not that any AI company has confirmed, except Microsoft. Google's AI optimization guide says "structured data isn't required for generative AI search" and that no special markup exists for it. The AI Overviews guide covers what matters there.
A Bing product manager wrote in October 2025 that schema helps AI systems understand content and that Bing's index powers Copilot. OpenAI's crawler docs and Perplexity's bot docs say nothing about schema, and I found no primary source saying JSON-LD changes what ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity cite.
Markup is still cheap and states your company facts in one place. Put it in the server HTML, since most AI crawlers don't run JavaScript. The AEO checklist covers what else answer engines need.
Which schema types to use on each page
| Page | Types | Key properties |
|---|---|---|
| Home page | Organization plus WebSite |
Name, logo, url, sameAs |
| Blog post | Article or BlogPosting |
Headline, image, author, dates |
| Product page | Product with Offer |
Price, currency, availability |
| Location page | A LocalBusiness subtype such as Dentist |
Name and address, which Google requires |
| Inner pages | BreadcrumbList |
Position, name and URL per item |
Walkthroughs for each: Organization schema, product schema, LocalBusiness schema and breadcrumb schema.
Google's rules for structured data
Markup must describe what a reader sees on the same page. Google forbids marking up hidden or misleading content, and honest sites usually break this by accident. A sale ends but the markup keeps the old price. A business marks up star ratings about itself, which Google ignores for self-serving reviews.
Markup that breaks these rules can bring a manual action called Structured data issue in Search Console's Manual Actions report. The page loses rich result eligibility but keeps its ranking.
To add markup, follow the guide to adding schema markup. To test it, the structured data testing tool guide and the Rich Results Test guide cover Google's validators.
Check your schema markup against Google's rules
The Schema Markup Checker fetches a public URL and reads every JSON-LD block in the HTML your server sends, or checks JSON-LD you paste before it ships. It flags invalid JSON, nodes with no @type, missing required and recommended properties for each type Google documents, and slips such as an Offer with no price. It notes retired types and, for a URL, lists the types that fit the page but are missing.
Each run costs 8 credits. It doesn't run JavaScript, notes Microdata and RDFa without validating them, and can't say whether Google will show a rich result.