Structured Data Explained: Organization, Product and FAQ

Structured data is a standard way of labelling the facts on a page, such as your business name, a product's price or a phone number, so Google can understand them. It does not guarantee any special result in search.

What it is

Google defines structured data as a standardised format for providing information about a page and classifying its content. Schema.org is the shared vocabulary behind it. It was founded in 2011 by Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Yandex.

Google accepts three formats: JSON-LD, Microdata and RDFa. It recommends JSON-LD, because it is the easiest to implement and maintain. You add it as a small block of code in the page, which your web developer or website builder can do.

Two rules to remember

First, markup must describe content that visitors can actually see. Google says not to add hidden information just to include structured data.

Second, quality beats quantity. Google says it is more important to give fewer but complete and accurate properties than every possible property with incomplete or wrong data.

Organization

Organization markup tells Google about your business. Google says it can help disambiguate your organisation in search results, and that it can influence elements such as logos and knowledge panels.

There are no required properties. Useful ones include name, alternateName, legalName, description, url, logo, address, telephone, email, contactPoint and sameAs. The sameAs property links to reference pages, such as your official profiles, that show your identity.

Put it on your home page or an about page. It is not needed on every page. Use the most specific type that fits, for example OnlineStore for an online shop. Google says changes can take several days to be crawled.

Product

Google separates two uses. Product snippets suit pages where people cannot buy directly. Merchant listings suit pages where customers can buy from you.

Core information includes name, image, offers with price, and availability. Reviews and ratings can be added. For merchant listings, shipping and return details matter too. Google recommends using page markup together with a Merchant Center feed where possible.

Google adds that search enhancements are shown at the discretion of each experience and may change over time. So markup makes you eligible. It does not entitle you.

FAQ

FAQ markup labels questions and answers on a page. In 2026 Google announced that FAQ rich results would no longer appear in Search from 7 May 2026, and later removed the feature's documentation. Existing markup remains technically valid, but Google will not use it for search result enhancements.

You can keep honest FAQs on your pages because customers use them. Just do not expect a special display for them in Google.

Test before and after

Use Google's Rich Results Test while building. After the page is live, watch the rich result status reports for errors caused by templates or serving problems.

Do you need it for AI answers?

Google says no special schema.org markup is needed to appear in its AI features. Treat structured data as good housekeeping that helps Google read your pages correctly.