Structured data
Structured data is machine-readable information embedded in a website's code, usually following the Schema.org standard in JSON-LD format. It tells search engines and AI systems unambiguously what content means — such as a business's opening hours, address or services.
People see at a glance what a page is about — a machine initially reads nothing but text. Structured data closes that gap: behind the scenes, the page declares what its content means, following the open Schema.org standard. The common format is JSON-LD — a small, invisible block of data that unambiguously labels details such as company name, address, opening hours or services.
The benefit is twofold. Search engines can present your content with rich results — event details or job listings directly on the results page; whether they do is their decision. And AI systems that deliver answers instead of link lists can process sources they understand without ambiguity more easily. If your facts are provided in structured form, you lower the risk of an AI guessing or mixing up your details.
Structured and unstructured — the difference
The running text of a page is unstructured: a person recognises the opening hours in it, a machine sees a string of characters. Structured data is the same fact in a fixed form — with a label saying what it is. “Monday to Friday, 8 am to 5 pm” in the text is unstructured; the same fact marked up as an opening time, with weekday and hour, is structured. Both sit on the same page — only the second can be read without guessing.
By far the largest part of what is on the web is unstructured. That is exactly why the small structured share is worth so much: it is the part a machine does not have to interpret.
What a business should mark up
Not everything — but what people actually ask about:
- name, address, phone
- opening hours, including exceptions on holidays
- services, ideally with a price range
- location and area served
- frequent questions with their answers
- people, where they appear publicly
The rule that gets broken most often
Only what is visible on the page may be marked up. Google puts it plainly in its structured data documentation: “Don't add structured data about information that is not visible to the user, even if the information is accurate.” Markup that claims something other than the visible text costs you the rich result — and at worst the trust of the systems reading it. The same goes for stale entries: if the opening hours change in the text, they have to change in the data too.
As a format, Google recommends JSON-LD because it is the easiest to maintain.
For a business in South Tyrol this matters twice over: guests and customers increasingly ask assistants instead of searching themselves — and the answer is only as good as the machine-readable source behind it. Ideally, structured data is not maintained by hand but generated automatically from the content you keep up to date anyway. Everything stays consistent, with no extra work.
Which facts are worth declaring first is in Which facts should a machine be able to read about your business?.
Frequently asked questions.
How do I measure whether my business appears in AI answers?
The most direct way: test it yourself. Ask the popular AI assistants the questions your customers would ask — for example, “which business near me does…?” — and check whether your business is mentioned and whether the details are correct. Repeat this regularly and in several languages, because answers change. In addition, website statistics show whether AI systems access your content: those visits leave traces.
So that it does not stop at spot checks, btlabs offers a visibility cockpit: it brings search data and AI systems' visits to your website together in one place, presented understandably. You see trends instead of snapshots — and notice early when details about your business need correcting.
How does an AI read my website — and what does that mean for my content?
An AI doesn't read your website top to bottom; it breaks it into individual text passages and, at the moment of the question, retrieves only the fitting ones (Retrieval-Augmented Generation, RAG). What matters is therefore not the whole page, but whether individual passages answer a concrete question on their own and machine-readably. Content loaded only via script or buried in long prose often doesn't reach the AI.
Do I need to rebuild my website for AI visibility?
Not necessarily. Structured data, clean multilingualism and performance can be retrofitted. But if the foundation is an old tower of plugins, a foundation that brings these things built in is often the faster and cheaper way.