Schema.org

Schema.org is the shared vocabulary of the major search engines for structured data. It enables a machine-readable description of content and is the basis for rich results in Google Search.

Why structured data

Google reads a web page as text, but it does not necessarily understand what a particular paragraph means. Structured data tells the crawler explicitly: here is a price, here is a phone number, here is a question with an answer. This helps Google classify the content better and display it in rich results.

Which types exist

Schema.org defines thousands of types for people, organisations, products, events, recipes and much more. Particularly relevant in a web design context are: LocalBusiness for local businesses, FAQPage for question-and-answer lists, BreadcrumbList for navigation, Service for services and Article for blog posts.

What it looks like technically

The format recommended today is JSON-LD. You place a script tag of type application/ld+json in the head of your page and use a JSON object inside it to define what the page describes. The advantage: it is separate from the visible HTML, so it is easy to maintain and validate.

Practical benefits

A page with correct LocalBusiness schema can appear in Google Maps with opening hours and star ratings. A FAQPage can show expandable questions directly in the search results. A recipe shows calories and cooking time as a preview. These rich results noticeably increase the click-through rate.

Related terms

JSON-LD · LocalBusiness Schema · FAQPage Schema