Structured data and rich results

Schema.org vocabulary, JSON-LD in practice, the types that produce visible results, validation, and the eligibility rules people ignore.

JSON-LD in practice

Structured data is a machine-readable statement about the page. Add JSON-LD inside a script element with type application/ld+json in the head, describing only what a user can actually see on the page.

// inside a script element with type application/ld+json
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "DNS TTL and caching explained",
  "description": "What TTL controls at each cache layer and how to plan a cutover.",
  "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Alex Doe", "url": "https://example.com/authors/alex" },
  "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Example", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://example.com/logo.png" } },
  "datePublished": "2026-04-02",
  "dateModified": "2026-09-18",
  "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://example.com/guides/dns/ttl" }
}

• dateModified must change when the content genuinely changes. Updating it without editing the page is a pattern that gets ignored at best and penalised at worst.
• Relative URLs are not allowed. Every @id, url and image path must be absolute.
• One page can carry several blocks. Use @graph to describe related entities once instead of repeating them.
• Microdata and RDFa still work but are verbose and easy to break in a template. JSON-LD is the practical choice.

Types that produce visible results

// Product price: keep priceValidUntil and currency explicit
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "Replacement filter pack",
  "sku": "FIL-204",
  "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "Acme" },
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "url": "https://example.com/products/filter-pack",
    "priceCurrency": "USD",
    "price": "24.00",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock",
    "priceValidUntil": "2026-12-31"
  }
}

Rich results are a presentation feature, not a ranking feature. Marking up content does not raise its position - it can only change how the result looks once it is already eligible to appear.

Validating and debugging

1. Validate the markup with the official rich results test and the schema validator; they catch different problems, so run both.
2. Check that every value in the markup is visible on the page. Invisible structured data is the most common cause of a manual action.
3. Watch the enhancement reports in Search Console. A sudden drop in valid items is usually a template regression, not a content change.
4. Test after a deploy, not during development - the rendered HTML is what matters, and client-side injection can be missed.
5. Keep the markup in the template, driven by the same data that renders the page, so the two cannot drift.

FAQ

Related

On-page essentials Local SEO and Google Business Profile

Last refreshed 2026-09-18.