Structured Data Types AI Search Engines Rely On
Structured data is the layer between your content and AI comprehension. Without it, AI engines are making educated guesses about what your content means. With it, you give them explicit, machine-readable facts they can cite with confidence.
Why AI engines depend on structured data
Natural language is ambiguous. A sentence like "We have been helping businesses grow since 2010" tells a human something meaningful - but an AI engine has to infer the entity (which company?), the activity (what kind of help?) and the date. Structured data resolves this ambiguity explicitly.
When you add Organisation schema that states your company name, founding date and industry, you give the AI engine verified facts rather than inferences. When you add Article schema that states the author and publication date, you give it attribution data rather than guesswork. Structured data converts implicit human-readable content into explicit machine-readable facts.
The full schema type reference for GEO
Entity identification schemas
- Organization - business identity, brand verification, sameAs profiles
- Person - author identity, credentials, professional profiles
- LocalBusiness - physical location, opening hours, NAP data
- Brand - standalone brand entity when separate from Organisation
Content type schemas
- Article - authored content with publication dates and attribution
- NewsArticle - journalistic content, particularly useful for publishers
- BlogPosting - blog content (subtype of Article)
- HowTo - step-by-step instructional content, highly citable by AI
- FAQPage - Q&A pairs directly quoted in AI answers
- QAPage - single question with multiple answers
Product and service schemas
- Product - commercial product with pricing, availability, reviews
- SoftwareApplication - SaaS and software products specifically
- Service - service offerings with description and provider
- Offer - pricing and availability data
- AggregateRating - composite review scores from multiple sources
- Review - individual review content
Navigation and structure schemas
- BreadcrumbList - hierarchical site structure
- WebSite - site-level information with SearchAction for sitelinks
- WebPage - general page type when no specific type applies
- SiteLinksSearchBox - enables search box in Google results
Implementation priority by site type
| Site type | Must-have schemas |
|---|---|
| Blog / content site | Organization, Article, FAQPage, Person (author), BreadcrumbList |
| Ecommerce | Organization, Product, AggregateRating, Review, BreadcrumbList |
| SaaS / software | Organization, SoftwareApplication, FAQPage, HowTo, AggregateRating |
| Local business | LocalBusiness, Organization, FAQPage, Review |
| Agency / service provider | Organization, Service, Person, FAQPage, Article |
Implementation tip: Use JSON-LD format (a script block in the page head) rather than microdata or RDFa. JSON-LD is easier to maintain, does not interfere with your HTML structure, and is the format recommended by Google and most AI engine documentation.
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