Definition

Structured data

Structured data is schema.org markup embedded in a page — usually as JSON-LD — that states explicitly what the page is about.

It reliably helps classic search features. Its effect on AI answer citation is far weaker than commonly claimed, and in our Chinese-engine testing it showed no positive correlation at all.

Implement it because it is cheap and unambiguous, not because it is a lever on citation share.

Related terms

JSON-LD schema.org Knowledge graph

Nostimates measures structured data across twelve AI answer surfaces. Request access →

All terms

AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation)GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)AI Overviews AI Mode Citation share n-sampling Query fan-out Grounding Share of voice (AI)Extraction success rate Surface Answer engine Citation Brand mention Mention rate Confidence interval Statistical significance Citation volatility Non-determinism Reproducibility Identity-free collection Personalisation Locale Residential proxy Bot detection Collection cost Credit Evidence retention Audit trail Parser version Canary prompt Data freshness Cadence Prompt set Head term Long-tail query Competitive set llms.txt robots.txt AI crawler Training crawler Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)Hallucination Answer box Featured snippet Zero-click search Entity Entity salience Knowledge graph JSON-LD schema.org FAQ schema Answer-first content Chunk Embedding Semantic search Prompt injection Market coverage Sentiment analysis Position tracking White-label data