Structured data: help Google understand your pages

When Google reads a page, it sees text. It guesses that a number followed by "$" is probably a price, that a row of stars looks like a rating. Structured data removes the guesswork: you tell it explicitly "this is a product, here's its price, its stock and its average rating".

In return, your page can appear in search results with a rich display: price and availability under the title, star rating, breadcrumbs instead of the URL. These details take up more space on screen and attract more clicks.

The format to use: JSON-LD#

Three syntaxes exist (JSON-LD, Microdata and RDFa), but Google recommends JSON-LD. It's also the easiest to maintain: a script block independent of the HTML, which you can add or change without touching the layout.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "Durand Workshop",
  "url": "https://www.durand-workshop.com",
  "logo": "https://www.durand-workshop.com/logo.png"
}
</script>

The vocabulary comes from schema.org, a shared reference used by the main search engines. Each type (Organization, Product, Article, LocalBusiness…) has its properties, some of which are required to get a rich result.

The types that pay off the most#

Not all types are equal. These cover most websites:

• Product for product pages: price, currency, availability, reviews. It's the most profitable for an online store.
• LocalBusiness for physical businesses: address, opening hours, phone number.
• Article or BlogPosting for editorial content: title, publication date, author.
• BreadcrumbList for breadcrumbs, useful on any site with a page hierarchy.

Here's a minimal product page:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "Waxed canvas backpack 22 L",
  "image": "https://www.example.com/img/backpack-22l.webp",
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "price": "89.00",
    "priceCurrency": "EUR",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock"
  }
}

What has changed in recent years#

Google regularly adjusts the displays it offers. In 2023, it sharply reduced FAQ rich results, now reserved for well-known government and health websites, and dropped the one for how-to guides (HowTo). Marking up this content causes no harm, but don't expect any visible effect in the results anymore.

That's a good reason to focus on the types tied to your business, rather than marking up everything on principle.

Test before publishing#

Two free tools are enough:

1. Google's Rich Results Test, which tells you whether a page is eligible for rich results and lists missing properties;
2. the Schema Markup Validator, more exhaustive, which checks the syntax for every type.

Once live, the "Enhancements" section of Search Console reports errors detected across the whole site.

A common mistake#

Many sites generate their structured data with a plugin or a theme, then forget about it. Over updates, properties disappear, types end up duplicated on the same page, or describe a product that's no longer for sale.

Codanalyst checks the presence and validity of structured data on every page it analyzes. Run an audit to see which of your pages have it, and which ones should.