Structured data is markup you add to a page describing what it is in a form machines can read without interpreting your layout: this is a product, this is its price, this is the company that sells it.
What it is for
A person reading your pricing page sees three plans and understands instantly. A machine sees text in boxes and has to infer that £29 is a price, that it is monthly, and that it belongs to the plan named above it. Usually it infers correctly. Sometimes it does not.
Structured data removes the inference. It states the facts in a standard vocabulary, in the page itself, where anything reading the page can find them.
What it can and cannot do
It can make you eligible for richer search results: prices, ratings, frequently asked questions and similar. Eligible, not entitled. Google decides whether to show them and often does not.
It cannot make a bad page rank. It is not a ranking factor in the way people hope. And it must describe what is genuinely on the page: marking up prices or reviews that a visitor cannot see is against the guidelines and risks a penalty rather than a reward.
Why it matters more now
AI systems assembling answers lean on structured data to resolve exactly the ambiguities they most often get wrong: whether a name refers to a company or a phrase, who publishes something, what a thing costs, whether the page is current.
A business with clear entity markup is easier to state facts about confidently. A business without it is easier to get wrong, and a system that is unsure tends to say nothing rather than risk it.
What most sites should add
An Organization entry identifying the business. Something describing what the page is: a product with its offers, an article with its date, a set of questions and answers where the page genuinely has them. Breadcrumbs if the site has a real hierarchy.
That is most of the available value. Beyond it, returns fall away quickly.
Where this shows up in the tracker
Every term in this glossary is something the product actually measures or acts on. Plans start at £29 a month, with rank tracking, AI visibility, the daily AI readiness scan, security and domain health, Search Console, backlinks and audits on every one of them.
Related terms
Canonical
A canonical tag is a line in a page telling search engines which address is the official version, for when the same content is reachable at several different URLs.
AEO
AEO stands for answer engine optimisation. It is the work of getting your business named and cited when an AI system answers a question, rather than merely ranking on a page of links. The name is new; a good deal of the work is not.
Citation
A citation is when an AI system uses your page as a source for its answer and links to it. It is distinct from a mention, which is when the system names your business without linking to you.
Agent readiness
Agent readiness is a score for how well AI systems can find, fetch and make sense of your website. It covers discoverability, crawler access, machine-readable content and agent capabilities, and it is the first thing to check when you are missing from AI answers.