Glossary · Schema Markup

Schema Markup

Structured-data tags (typically JSON-LD) embedded on web pages that tell Google and AI engines what the page is about — used heavily in reputation work to control how a subject is summarised.

Full Definition

Schema markup is a vocabulary (defined at schema.org) used to annotate web pages with machine-readable metadata. It tells search engines and AI systems exactly what a page is about: who the subject is (Person), what the organisation does (Organization, ProfessionalService), what services it offers (Service, Offer), and how to cite it. In reputation and AI-search optimisation, schema markup is the difference between a page being correctly understood and being misinterpreted. A "Person" schema with correct sameAs links (Wikipedia, Wikidata, LinkedIn) lets AI engines verify identity. A "VideoObject" schema lets a case-study clip appear in Google Video search. A "FAQPage" schema gets a brand's answers cited in AI Overviews. Modern reputation work treats structured data as a first-class deliverable — every canonical surface a subject controls ships with rich, valid schema.

In practice

  • An executive's company page has full Organization + Person + LocalBusiness schema; Google's Knowledge Panel pulls clean facts directly from the page.
  • A case-study video grid uses VideoObject ItemList schema; the videos appear in Google Video Search and Perplexity uses them as citations.

Also known as

structured data · JSON-LD · schema.org