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Structured Data: The Code Google Reads

There is a piece of code you can add to your website that does not change how the page looks at all. Its only job is to state plain facts about your business in a format machines read perfectly: your name, address, phone number, hours, services, prices, reviews. It is called structured data, and for a small business it is one of the best-value things you can add to a site.

The short version

  • Structured data (also called schema markup) is a standard way to label your content so search engines understand it, not just display it.
  • Google recommends a format called JSON-LD, a small script that sits in the page code.
  • It can earn you richer search listings: star ratings, FAQs, event dates, business info panels.
  • It is also how AI search tools pull clean facts about you. If your facts are labeled, they are easier to quote correctly.

Why a machine needs this spelled out

When you look at a page, you instantly know that “Open until 6pm” is business hours and “$120” is a price. A search engine is guessing. It reads a wall of text and tries to work out what each piece means.

Structured data removes the guessing. Instead of hoping Google figures out your address from the footer, you hand it a labeled block that says: this is a LocalBusiness, the name is X, the street address is Y, the phone is Z, here are the hours. Google’s own words: structured data is “a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content.”

What it looks like

You do not need to read code to use this, but it helps to see it. A simplified example for a local business:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "LocalBusiness",
  "name": "Bright Coast Plumbing",
  "telephone": "+1-503-555-0142",
  "address": {
    "streetAddress": "14 Harbor Rd",
    "addressLocality": "Astoria",
    "addressRegion": "OR"
  },
  "openingHours": "Mo-Fr 08:00-17:00",
  "priceRange": "$$"
}

That block goes in the page’s code. Visitors never see it. Google, Bing, and AI assistants read it directly.

The types worth knowing

You do not need all of these. Pick the ones that match real content on your site.

  • LocalBusiness or Organization: your core identity, on your home page and contact page. Use the most specific type that fits, like Electrician or Dentist.
  • Service: what you offer, on each service page. Name, description, area served.
  • FAQPage: a real list of questions and answers on a page. Handy for service pages, and it lines up with how people phrase things to AI tools.
  • Review and AggregateRating: ratings you display on your own site. Google has strict rules here: the reviews must be genuine, collected by you, and visible on the page. Do not mark up reviews pulled from other sites.
  • BreadcrumbList: your page hierarchy, which can show a tidy path in the search result instead of a raw URL.
  • Article or BlogPosting: for blog posts, with author and date.
  • Product, Event: if you sell products or run events, these let the result show price, availability, and dates.

What it gets you

Richer search listings. The right markup makes your result eligible for extras: review stars, an FAQ drop-down, event dates, product prices and stock status. These take up more space and get more clicks. Google’s documentation points to case studies where rich listings raised click-through rates by double digits.

Correct facts in AI answers. When an AI tool answers “what time does that shop close,” it wants a clean, labeled source. Marked-up hours are easier to quote and less likely to be pulled wrong from some out-of-date directory.

A consistent identity. Markup that repeats your business name, address, and phone the same way across your site helps search engines trust that the information is right. That consistency also feeds your local search ranking, and it should match your Google Business Profile exactly.

The rules that matter

  • It must match what people see. Google is explicit: do not mark up information that is not visible on the page, and do not invent content just to hold markup. Fake review stars in markup can get your site a manual penalty.
  • Use the type that fits. The closer the type matches your real content, the better.
  • Test it. Google’s free Rich Results Test tells you whether your markup is valid and what it qualifies for. The “Enhancements” section of Google Search Console then tracks it over time and flags errors.
  • Rich results are not guaranteed. Valid markup makes you eligible. Google still decides when to show the extras.

Do you already have it?

Maybe. Many WordPress themes and SEO plugins add basic markup automatically. The problem is that it is often generic, incomplete, or describing the wrong thing. It is common to find a site marking every page as a generic “WebPage” and never once saying “this is a local business, here is where it is.” It is also common to have two plugins outputting conflicting markup for the same page. Having some markup is not the same as having the right markup.

Run your home page and one service page through the Rich Results Test. If it reports nothing, or only “Breadcrumbs,” there is easy ground to gain.

A before and after

Say you run a heating and cooling company. Without markup, your search result is a blue title, your web address, and a line of text Google grabbed from somewhere on the page. A person scanning ten results has little reason to pick yours.

With LocalBusiness markup plus a few genuine reviews marked up on the page, the same result can show a star rating, your hours, and your service area. With FAQ markup on your service page, it can show a couple of expandable questions right in the result, like “Do you offer emergency service?” That listing takes up more space, answers questions before the click, and tends to get chosen more often. Nothing about the page looked different to a visitor. The difference was all in the labels.

How I can help

A free website health check shows what structured data your site outputs today, whether it is valid, whether anything conflicts, and what it is missing. For most small sites, the gap is a proper LocalBusiness or Organization block, service markup, and FAQ markup where it applies.

Adding it is usually a small, self-contained job with no visible change to your site and a real chance of better listings. Every site I build ships with hand-written structured data that matches the content, not a generic plugin default.

Sources

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