What Is Structured Data and Schema.org Markup
Basics3 minInnovialabs editorial team
In short
Structured data is a machine-readable description of page content using the Schema.org vocabulary: product, article, organization, review. It helps search engines understand a page and may earn a rich result, but it guarantees neither the rich result nor higher rankings.
The short answer
Structured data describes page content in a format programs can read easily. A person sees "Laptop, 12,000,000 UZS, in stock" on the page; through markup, a search engine gets the same information as fields: type — product, price, currency, availability.
Schema.org is the shared vocabulary for these descriptions, supported by Google, Yandex, Bing and others. It defines types (Product, Article, Organization) and their properties (name, price, author).
Markup formats
| Format | What it looks like | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| JSON-LD | A separate <script type="application/ld+json"> block | The default choice: kept apart from layout, easier to maintain |
| Microdata | itemscope, itemprop attributes inside the HTML | Older templates and CMSs that already use it |
| RDFa | vocab, property attributes in the HTML | Less common, mostly in specific systems |
Google recommends JSON-LD, and Yandex supports it too. If you are starting from scratch, choose it.
An example for an article:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "What Is Structured Data",
"author": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Company Name" },
"datePublished": "2026-01-15",
"image": "https://example.com/cover.jpg"
}
</script>
Common types
- Organization / LocalBusiness — name, logo, contacts, address, opening hours.
- Product + Offer — product, price, availability; often with AggregateRating and Review.
- Article / BlogPosting — headline, author, date, image.
- BreadcrumbList — breadcrumbs that may appear in the snippet instead of the URL.
- FAQPage — questions and answers on the page.
- Event, Recipe, JobPosting, Course — for matching content.
- WebSite — a description of the site as a whole.
What search engines do with it
- Understand the page better. Which entity is described, who the author is, which organisation the content belongs to.
- May show a rich result: rating stars, price, breadcrumbs, event details.
- Reuse the data elsewhere: business profiles, shopping features, knowledge panels.
What markup does not do:
- It is not a direct ranking factor and does not lift positions by itself.
- It does not guarantee a rich result — the search engine decides, and the set of supported types changes over time.
- It won't fix a weak page.
The indirect benefit is real: a more prominent snippet can attract more clicks.
How to implement it without errors
- Mark up only what is visible on the page. The price in the markup must match the page; reviews must be genuine.
- Generate markup from the same data as the content — in a CMS template or component, not by hand on every page.
- Fill in required and recommended properties for the type you use.
- Validate: Google's Rich Results Test, the Schema.org validator and the checker in Yandex Webmaster.
- Watch the reports in Search Console and Yandex Webmaster after publishing.
Common mistakes
- Marking up data that isn't on the page — this breaks search engine guidelines and can lead to manual actions.
- The same
Organizationwith different details on different pages. - Self-serving reviews of your own company marked up on its own site to get stars — Google does not show stars for them.
- Markup that isn't updated when price or availability changes.