What structured data does

Schema markup describes a page in a vocabulary machines understand: this is a product with this price, an article by this author, a business at this address. It can earn enhanced listings in Google and Bing, and it helps both search engines and AI assistants identify entities: who you are, where you are, what you sell and who wrote the page. In 2026 the entity job matters as much as the rich-result job, because assistants need to know which organisation to attribute an answer to.

What still earns rich results in 2026

Google has retired or restricted several types, so the first thing we do is stop you spending on markup that no longer shows anything.

Type	Status in Google Search	What we do
Product, Offer, Review snippet	Live: price, availability, stars on eligible pages	Implement from live product data
LocalBusiness, Organization	Live: knowledge panel and entity data	Implement on every site, with sameAs
Article, BreadcrumbList	Live: dates, author, breadcrumb trail in results	Implement on templates
Event, Recipe, Video, JobPosting	Live where the content genuinely applies	Implement where it applies
FAQPage	Retired. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results in May 2026 and removed the documentation in June 2026	Keep the visible Q&A, drop the markup
HowTo	Retired in 2023	Remove
Sitelinks searchbox (WebSite SearchAction)	Retired in November 2024	Remove

The types that remain are listed in Google's Search Gallery, and we check it before recommending anything. Our guide to rich results that still work has the sources.

The rule that gets sites penalised

Markup must describe content that is visible on the page. Marking up reviews that are not shown, prices that differ from the page, or questions that do not exist is a policy violation and can lose all rich results for the site through a manual action. Reviews hosted on a third-party platform cannot be marked up as your own aggregate rating unless they are displayed on the page. We audit for this first, and we remove markup that breaks the rule even if it currently shows stars.

How we implement, step by step

Inventory. Every JSON-LD, microdata and RDFa block on the site is extracted from a crawl and listed by template, with validation errors and the visible content it describes.
Match to the gallery. Each template is mapped to the rich-result types it is eligible for today, and the deprecated types are marked for removal.
Design the graph. Organization or LocalBusiness as the root entity, with WebSite, WebPage, BreadcrumbList and the page type linked by @id, so every page points back to the same entity.
Generate from data. JSON-LD is produced from the same fields the page renders (price, author, date, address), so the markup cannot drift from the content.
Validate. Google's Rich Results Test for eligibility and the Schema.org validator for correctness, on staging before release.
Monitor. Search Console's enhancement reports for errors and warnings, checked monthly and after every template change.

What we need from you

Access to the templates, or a developer who can add a JSON-LD block that reads page data.
The canonical facts: legal name, address, phone, logo, social profiles, opening hours, and the people who author content.
For products: a feed or database access so prices and availability in the markup match the page in real time.
Search Console access for the enhancement reports.

What schema can and cannot achieve

It can add price, availability, stars, dates, breadcrumbs and author details to your listings, which lifts click-through rate on pages that already rank. It can make your organisation unambiguous to Google and to AI assistants. And it can protect you from the manual actions that misleading markup causes.

It does not raise rankings on its own. Google has said structured data is not a ranking factor. A page with perfect markup and a weak answer stays where it is. It also cannot force a rich result: eligibility is decided by Google per query and per page, and a valid implementation may still show as a plain listing. We report eligibility and actual appearance separately so the difference is visible.

How it is measured

Validity: items, errors and warnings per type in Search Console's enhancement reports.
Appearance: the search appearance filter in the performance report, which shows clicks and impressions for listings that showed a rich result.
Click-through rate for pages before and after markup went live, at the same position.
Entity checks: whether the knowledge panel and AI assistants describe the company correctly.

Common failure modes

Two plugins, two Organization blocks, with different names and logos.
Hard-coded markup that shows last year's price or a discontinued product.
Review stars from a widget marked up as the page's own aggregate rating.
FAQ schema added in 2025 still in the template, doing nothing but adding weight to the page.
Markup on the wrong page: LocalBusiness on every page instead of the home and location pages, or Article on a product listing.
Validated once, never again. A theme update changes a field name and the markup silently breaks.

Deliverables

Deliverable	What it is	Cadence
Schema audit	What is present, what is invalid, what is deprecated, what is missing, per template	At start
Entity graph	Organization or LocalBusiness root with linked WebSite, WebPage and BreadcrumbList	At start
Template markup	JSON-LD per page type, generated from page data	At start, then per new template
Deprecation cleanup	FAQ, HowTo, SearchAction and other retired types removed	At start
Validation and appearance report	Enhancement report status and rich-result clicks and impressions	Monthly

How it runs

AuditFind invalid, mismatched, deprecated and missing markup.
DesignChoose the types that apply and still earn results; design the entity graph.
ImplementJSON-LD tied to page data, validated on staging.
MonitorWatch enhancement reports and appearance data every month.

Which plan includes it

Starter $2,200	Growth $4,500	Scale $8,500
Audit and cleanup Organization, breadcrumbs and page types on templates	Everything in Starter All applicable types, including Product and Review Custom entity graph	Everything in Growth Custom and nested entities across large catalogues Multi-location and multi-language entities

Compare all plans →

Questions

Does schema improve rankings?

Not directly. It can improve click-through with richer listings and helps search engines and AI assistants understand the page and the organisation behind it.

Are FAQ rich results gone?

Yes. Google stopped showing them in May 2026 and removed the documentation in June 2026. FAQPage markup is still valid vocabulary, but it produces no result. Keep the visible questions; drop the markup.

Can schema be added without a developer?

Often through a tag manager or plugin, but template-level JSON-LD generated from page data is more reliable and does not drift.

What happens if our markup is wrong?

Invalid markup is ignored. Misleading markup can lead to a manual action that removes rich results site-wide until it is fixed and reviewed.

Can we mark up our Google or third-party reviews?

Not as your own aggregate rating unless the reviews are displayed on the page. Google's policy is explicit about this, and it is one of the most common causes of a manual action.

Does schema help with ChatGPT and AI Overviews?

It helps assistants identify the entity behind a page and the facts on it. It is one signal among several; answer-first content and brand mentions matter more for citations.

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Rich Results and Schema