Structured data for beginners: FAQ and Product schema

Search engines read pages and infer what they are about. Structured data removes the guesswork: a short block of code that states, in a shared vocabulary, “this is a product, its price is this, it is in stock” or “these are questions and their answers”.

What it looks like

The recommended format is JSON-LD: a script block in the page's HTML containing data that uses the schema.org vocabulary. It does not change what visitors see. It can go in the head or the body; search engines read it either way. Many website builders have a field for custom header code where it can be pasted.

Product markup

Product structured data describes an item's name, images and identifiers, with an offer giving its price, currency and availability, and optionally an aggregate rating. For Google to show product details in results, a product needs a name and at least one of an offer, a rating or a review. Common mistakes:

• Prices must be plain numbers — 1299.99, not “$1,299.99” — with the currency code in its own field.
• A GTIN, the number behind a retail barcode, must have 8, 12, 13 or 14 digits and a correct check digit. The Barcode Generator explains and verifies check digits.
• Availability and condition must use schema.org's standard values.

FAQ markup: valid, but rarely shown

FAQPage markup lists questions and their accepted answers. Since August 2023, Google shows FAQ rich results only for well-known, authoritative government and health websites. On other sites the markup is still valid and still read, but it will not produce expandable questions under your listing. Add it if it describes your page accurately; do not expect it to change how the page looks in results.

Create markup step by step

1. Open the Schema Markup Generator and choose FAQ page or Product.
2. Fill in the questions and answers, or the product's details, price and rating.
3. Fix anything flagged as an error, and read the notes.
4. Copy the script tag into your page's HTML.
5. Confirm it with Google's Rich Results Test.

The checks follow Google's published guidance, and the output is escaped so that text inside an answer cannot break your page.

The two rules that matter most

• Mark up only what visitors can see. The same questions and answers, the same price. Markup that contradicts the page can be ignored or treated as spam.
• Use genuine reviews only. Ratings must come from real customer reviews shown on the page. Marking up ratings you wrote yourself is against Google's guidelines.

What structured data does not do

It is not a ranking boost. It helps search engines understand a page and can make it eligible for rich results, which can make a listing more noticeable — but content, usefulness and links still decide where a page ranks. A page can contain several blocks, such as a Product and a breadcrumb trail; describe each thing once.

Related

Structured data is for search engines; Open Graph tags control how links look when shared. Check those with the Open Graph Preview — see how to fix link previews.