Structured data and AI search: what it does and what it doesn't

Is adding schema markup enough for AI assistants to start citing you? Google's own documentation gives a more careful answer. Structured data is not a secret key to AI answers, but it is one of the clearest ways to tell search engines who you are and what is on your pages.

Here is what structured data is, what Google says about it for AI features, and where it is worth your time.

What structured data is

Structured data is a standard way of describing a page in code, so that a machine does not have to guess. Google describes it as a standardized format for giving information about a page and classifying its content¹. Instead of hoping a crawler works out that a number on your page is a price, you label it as a price.

The common vocabulary for this is Schema.org, which was founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex and is developed through an open community process³. According to Schema.org, as of 2024 more than 45 million web domains used it to mark up their pages, with over 450 billion Schema.org objects³.

What Google says about AI features

This is the part that surprises people. For AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google says you do not need new machine-readable files or special markup, and that there is no special schema.org structured data you need to add⁴.

What Google does list is the same groundwork as for Search in general, and one point is about structured data: make sure it matches the visible text on the page⁴. Google also asks site owners to keep their Merchant Center and Business Profile information up to date⁴.

So the honest answer is: structured data alone will not put you in AI answers. Good, crawlable, indexable pages come first.

So why bother?

Because understanding comes before being shown. Google says it uses the structured data it finds to understand the content of a page and to gather information about the world, including the companies described in the markup¹. When your name, logo, address, products and prices are labelled clearly, there is less room for a system to get them wrong.

Structured data also makes pages eligible for richer search results, and Google publishes case studies from sites that added it. Rotten Tomatoes measured a 25% higher click-through rate on 100,000 pages with structured data compared with pages without it¹. The Food Network enabled search features on 80% of its pages and saw a 35% increase in visits¹. Nestlé measured an 82% higher click-through rate for pages shown as rich results¹. These are examples Google chose to share, not averages, but they show what the format is for.

The rules that matter

Google's guidelines are short and worth following closely:

• Mark up only what visitors can see. Google asks you to leave out anything that people reading the page cannot see².
• Keep it honest. Irrelevant or misleading markup, such as fake reviews, is against the guidelines².
• Do not expect a display. Even correct markup does not mean your page will show a rich result; Google shapes its results around what it judges the best experience for each user².
• Use JSON-LD if you can. Google recommends it as the easiest format to implement and maintain at scale¹.

Where to start

1. Your homepage: describe the business with an Organization or LocalBusiness block, including the official name, website, logo and the profiles that belong to you.
2. Products and services: if you sell online, add Product details with prices and availability that match what the page shows.
3. Your other listings: keep your Merchant Center and Business Profile information in line with your site.
4. Test it: run your pages through Google's Rich Results Test after each change.

The OLAB Assist free scan checks whether your homepage describes your business in structured data and gives you a ready-to-use block if it does not.