Structured data: the small piece of code that explains your business to Google and AI

Anyone who opens your site understands at once that “12 Shipka St” is an address and “€19” is a price. To a machine it is just text. Structured data is a short piece of code that says it outright: this is a business, this is its address, this is a product and here is its price.

Why it is worth it

• Richer Google results. Stars, price and stock under a product; a breadcrumb trail instead of a long URL.
• A clearer picture for AI assistants. When the data is organised, the model does not have to guess who you are and what you offer.
• The same facts everywhere. Opening hours and phone number are recorded once, clearly.

The types we use most

• Organization or LocalBusiness — name, logo, address, phone, opening hours and social profiles.
• Product with Offer — price, currency, availability and, when you have real reviews, AggregateRating.
• Article — headline, author, publish date and last update.
• BreadcrumbList — the path to the page, e.g. Home › Services › Online stores.
• FAQPage — questions and answers. Google now shows these results for only a small number of sites, but the markup still helps machines understand the page.

What it looks like

Google recommends JSON-LD — a separate block of code in the page that does not touch the design. Here is an example for a local business:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "LocalBusiness",
  "name": "Sunshine Bakery",
  "url": "https://example.bg/",
  "telephone": "+359 888 000 000",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "12 Shipka St",
    "addressLocality": "Plovdiv",
    "addressCountry": "BG"
  },
  "openingHours": "Mo-Sa 07:00-19:00",
  "sameAs": ["https://www.facebook.com/…", "https://www.instagram.com/…"]
}
</script>

Three rules

1. Only mark up what visitors can see on the page. Hidden or different data breaks Google’s guidelines.
2. Never invent reviews or ratings. The penalty is losing rich results for the whole site.
3. Test with the Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator after every change.

A good site speaks to people. Structured data teaches it to speak to machines too.

Every site we build ships with structured data for the business, services and articles. If yours does not — get in touch.