Skip to content
Sitequiry
EN SL
Free analysis

Structured data for business websites: what still matters in 2026

Structured data is a machine-readable description of what a page is about: your company, a product and its price, an article and its author. Google recommends JSON-LD. Several rich result types were restricted or retired in recent years, so an older checklist can send you in the wrong direction.

Updated 2 min read Written by the Ge-ko team

The types worth having

  • Organization or a LocalBusiness subtype on the homepage: name, logo, URL, address, phone, opening hours and sameAs links to your official profiles. This is the foundation for being recognized as an entity.
  • WebSite with your site name, which helps Google show the right site name in results.
  • BreadcrumbList on inner pages, which produces breadcrumb trails in results.
  • Product with Offer (price, currency, availability) on product pages, plus shipping and return policy details where you can. This powers merchant listings and product snippets.
  • Article or BlogPosting with author and dates on editorial content.

What changed: FAQ, HowTo and review stars

Since August 2023 Google shows FAQ rich results only for well-known, authoritative government and health websites, and HowTo rich results were removed entirely. In 2025 Google also retired a number of less-used rich result types.

FAQPage markup is still valid schema.org and can help machines read question-and-answer content, but you should not expect expandable FAQs in Google results from it.

Review stars have limits too: a business cannot get star snippets for reviews it publishes about itself on its own site through LocalBusiness or Organization markup.

Structured data and AI answers

AI systems do not need special markup to read a page, and Google says no additional structured data is required for its AI features. Accurate markup still helps: it states facts such as prices, locations, opening hours and authorship unambiguously, which makes a page easier to understand and quote correctly.

Mistakes that get markup ignored

  • Marking up content that is not visible on the page, such as reviews or FAQs that only exist in the JSON-LD.
  • Prices, ratings or availability in the markup that differ from what the page shows.
  • Copying the same Organization block with a different name or logo on every page.
  • Invalid JSON: one missing comma makes the whole block unreadable.

How to test it

Use Google's Rich Results Test to see which rich results a page is eligible for, and the Schema Markup Validator for general schema.org validity. After deployment, the Enhancements reports in Search Console show errors across the whole site.

The Sitequiry analysis detects the JSON-LD types on the analyzed page and points out which important ones are missing for that type of page.

Frequently asked questions

JSON-LD, Microdata or RDFa?

JSON-LD. Google supports all three but recommends JSON-LD because it is separate from the HTML and easiest to maintain.

Does structured data improve rankings directly?

No. It makes pages eligible for rich results and easier to understand, which can improve click-through, but it is not a ranking boost by itself.

Should I still add FAQPage markup?

Only where the page really has visible questions and answers. It is harmless and describes the content, but it will not produce FAQ rich results for most sites.

Check your own site in about a minute

The free analysis measures the points from this guide on your URL and shows what to fix first.

Free analysis Get it fixed

Related guides

  1. How to appear in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode

    Google's AI features use the normal Search index. What that means for eligibility, controls and content.

  2. llms.txt: what it is and whether your site needs one

    A proposed Markdown file that summarizes your site for AI tools. Cheap to add, but no search engine promises to use it.