Structured Data: Labeling Your Facts for Machines

Technical meaning. Structured data is information on a web page written in a standardized, machine-readable format (most commonly JSON-LD using the Schema.org vocabulary) that explicitly labels what things are: this is the business name, this is the address, these are the hours, this is the price, this is a review.

In plain English. To a person, a web page obviously shows a restaurant’s name and hours. To a machine, it is just a wall of text it has to interpret. Structured data is like attaching little labels to each fact: a tag that says “this is our name,” another that says “these are our hours.” You stop making the AI guess and start telling it directly.

Why it matters. This is often the single biggest gap. Without structured data, AI assistants fall back on whatever they can scrape from directories and review sites, which means those third parties, not you, end up defining your business. With it, you hand the AI the correct facts in a form it trusts.

How it shows up in real life. Most small-business sites have none. Adding it does not change how the page looks to a human at all; it adds an invisible layer of clearly labeled facts underneath, which is exactly what the machines read.