Structured Data
Machine-readable markup describing what a page is about, in a shared vocabulary.
Structured data is metadata embedded in a page describing its content in a vocabulary machines already understand — overwhelmingly Schema.org, expressed as JSON-LD in a script tag. It is what lets a search engine or an assistant know that a page describes a recipe, an event, a business, or an article, rather than inferring it from prose.
The model is a graph. Entities have types and properties, and — importantly — identifiers, so that separate fragments can refer to the same entity. A page can emit a small object referencing an organization by identifier, and that reference resolves against a fuller description published elsewhere on the site, or dangles harmlessly if it does not.
Two practical cautions.
Verify what is actually emitted. A page may carry markup from several sources — the application, a plugin, a hand-pasted block maintained by someone else — and assumptions about which produced what are frequently wrong. Requesting the live page and reading the scripts is a two-minute check that has repeatedly overturned confident claims.
Structured data is a claim about content, not a substitute for it. Markup describing something the page does not contain is a policy violation as well as a lie.
See also13
RSS
A syndication format letting readers subscribe to a site without an intermediary.
Data & Content13 connections
Headless CMS
A content system exposing structured data through an API, with presentation left entirely to consumers.
Data & Content12 connections
Search Engine Optimization
Making content discoverable through search, most of which is ordinary quality work.
Data & Content29 connections
Semantic HTML
Using elements for their meaning, so the document conveys structure without extra description.
Design & Interface24 connections
JSON Schema
A vocabulary for describing the shape of JSON data, and the lingua franca of model tool interfaces.
Agents & Language Models14 connections
Knowledge Graph
Information modeled as entities and the typed relationships between them.
Meaning & Society17 connections
Information Architecture
How information is organized, labeled, and navigated so people can find what they need.
Data & Content17 connections
Static Site Generation
Rendering every page to a file at build time, so serving is just handing over bytes.
Web Platform19 connections
Backlink
The automatically-derived list of pages linking to the current one.
Meaning & Society14 connections
Breadcrumb
The short row of links near the top of a page that shows where it sits in a site's hierarchy, such as Home › Shoes › Running, letting people orient themselves and step back up a level in one click.
Design & Interface10 connections
Barcode
Patterns of bars or squares that machines read as numbers, which turned every product into a database key in the 1970s, and whose two-dimensional successors carry links, tickets, and payments.
Data & Content4 connections
Open Graph
The meta tags a page uses to describe its own preview card when a link is shared, how chat apps and social networks fetch them, and why a preview shows only what the page claims about itself.
Web Platform13 connections
Web Search Engine
A system that crawls the web, indexes what it finds, and ranks pages in answer to typed queries, the main way people have found things online since the late 1990s and one of the largest advertising businesses ever built.
Web Platform9 connections
Linked from13
- BacklinkMeaning & Society
The automatically-derived list of pages linking to the current one.
- BarcodeData & Content
Patterns of bars or squares that machines read as numbers, which turned every product into a database key in the 1970s, and whose two-dimensional successors carry links, tickets, and payments.
- BreadcrumbDesign & Interface
The short row of links near the top of a page that shows where it sits in a site's hierarchy, such as Home › Shoes › Running, letting people orient themselves and step back up a level in one click.
- FrontmatterData & Content
A metadata block at the top of a text document, separated from the body by delimiters.
- Headless CMSData & Content
A content system exposing structured data through an API, with presentation left entirely to consumers.
- Information ArchitectureData & Content
How information is organized, labeled, and navigated so people can find what they need.
- JSON SchemaAgents & Language Models
A vocabulary for describing the shape of JSON data, and the lingua franca of model tool interfaces.
- Knowledge GraphMeaning & Society
Information modeled as entities and the typed relationships between them.
- Open GraphWeb Platform
The meta tags a page uses to describe its own preview card when a link is shared, how chat apps and social networks fetch them, and why a preview shows only what the page claims about itself.
- RSSData & Content
A syndication format letting readers subscribe to a site without an intermediary.
- Search Engine OptimizationData & Content
Making content discoverable through search, most of which is ordinary quality work.
- Semantic HTMLDesign & Interface
Using elements for their meaning, so the document conveys structure without extra description.
- Web Search EngineWeb Platform
A system that crawls the web, indexes what it finds, and ranks pages in answer to typed queries, the main way people have found things online since the late 1990s and one of the largest advertising businesses ever built.