JSON-LD Explained: Structured Data and Rich Results
Modern search engines do not evaluate pages purely as HTML documents. They rely on structured data to understand what a page represents. JSON-LD is the primary mechanism for providing that information.
What Is JSON-LD?
JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is a standardized format for embedding structured, machine-readable metadata in a web page.
It is included using:
1<script type="application/ld+json">
JSON-LD is most commonly used with Schema.org vocabularies to describe entities such as articles, products, organizations, events, and FAQs.
Key properties:
- Plain JSON
- Not visible to users
- Not executable JavaScript
- Intended for crawlers and parsers
Why JSON-LD Exists
HTML alone is ambiguous. Search engines historically inferred meaning heuristically, which is unreliable at scale.
JSON-LD allows developers to explicitly define entities and relationships, removing guesswork. Instead of inferring “this looks like a product,” you declare “this is a product, with this price and availability.”