How to add JSON-LD schema to your website.

JSON-LD is the cheapest useful thing you can add to your website for AI search. It tells ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Gemini what your business does, what you sell and how to describe you, instead of leaving them to work it out from your page copy. It will not on its own get you recommended. Our own research found assistants lean heavily on directories and review sites when deciding who is good. What schema does is remove the reason they have for skipping you.

Why this is worth twenty minutes

We measured what assistants actually cite across 50 buying questions in July 2026, with the methodology and a run-to-run variance control published alongside the dataset. Two findings from it are worth having before you write any markup.

The four assistants agreed on a full set of names in 3 of the 50 questions, and cited 951 distinct websites between them. There is no single index to be correct in, so the goal of markup is not to rank: it is to be unambiguous to each reader in turn about who you are and what you sell.

Between 10% and 31% of what they cited, depending on the industry, was a directory rather than a business's own site. Schema is how you stop being the ambiguous option when an assistant is deciding between your page and the listing that describes you. The full study has the per-industry breakdown.

What is JSON-LD?

JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is a way to embed machine-readable information about your website directly into your HTML. It sits inside a script tag and is invisible to visitors, but AI search engines and Google read it to understand your content.

Think of it like a business card for machines. When Perplexity crawls your site, it reads your JSON-LD to learn your company name, what you sell, your contact info, and your FAQ answers. Without it, the AI has to parse your entire page and hope it gets the right interpretation.

The 4 schema types every website needs

1. Organization Schema

This tells AI engines who you are. Your company name, logo, website, contact info, and social profiles. Every website should have this on the homepage.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "Your Company Name",
  "url": "https://yourwebsite.com",
  "logo": "https://yourwebsite.com/logo.png",
  "email": "hello@yourwebsite.com",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://twitter.com/yourcompany",
    "https://linkedin.com/company/yourcompany"
  ]
}
</script>

Paste this in your head tag on your homepage. Replace the placeholder values with your real information.

2. Product Schema

If you sell anything (products, services, subscriptions), add Product schema to every product page. This is what gets you into Google AI Overviews shopping results and AI-powered product recommendations.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "Your Product Name",
  "description": "One sentence describing your product.",
  "image": "https://yourwebsite.com/product.jpg",
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "price": "29.99",
    "priceCurrency": "USD",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock",
    "url": "https://yourwebsite.com/product"
  }
}
</script>

3. FAQ Schema

FAQ schema is one of the highest-impact additions for AI search. When someone asks ChatGPT a question that matches your FAQ, it can pull your answer directly. This is how businesses get cited in AI-generated responses.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "FAQPage",
  "mainEntity": [
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "What does your company do?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "We help businesses optimize..."
      }
    },
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "How much does it cost?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Plans start at $29/month..."
      }
    }
  ]
}
</script>

Add 5-10 questions that your customers actually ask. Write clear, factual answers in 2-3 sentences. Avoid marketing language. AI engines prefer direct, informative responses.

4. Article Schema

For blog posts and content pages, Article schema tells AI engines when the content was published and last updated. This is critical because AI search engines heavily weight content freshness: undated content gets deprioritized.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "Your Article Title",
  "datePublished": "2026-06-27",
  "dateModified": "2026-06-27",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Your Company Name"
  }
}
</script>

Where to put the code

Every JSON-LD block goes inside a script tag with type "application/ld+json" in your HTML. You can place it in the head or at the end of body. Both work. Most developers put it in the head.

WordPress: Use a plugin like Rank Math or Yoast, or paste the code into your theme header file.

Shopify: Add the code to your theme.liquid file inside the head tag.

Next.js / React: Create a component that renders the script tag with the JSON content.

Plain HTML: Paste it directly into your HTML file.

How to verify it works

After adding your JSON-LD, verify it's valid:

• Open your page in a browser and view source, search for "application/ld+json" to confirm the code is there.
• Run it through Google's Rich Results Test, which reports what Google can parse, or the schema.org validator, which checks the markup against the vocabulary itself rather than against Google's rich-result requirements. The two disagree often, and the second is the one that matters when your reader is an assistant rather than a search result.
• Track the page and watch the score move. Schema coverage is one of the signals we re-read every week, so the next run tells you whether the markup landed.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Missing datePublished/dateModified: an undated page gives an assistant nothing to weigh on freshness, so a dated competitor page is the safer thing to quote.
• Placeholder text: Don't leave "Your Company Name" in the schema. Use your actual business information.
• Duplicate schema: Don't add the same schema type twice on one page. One Organization per homepage, one Product per product page.
• Invalid JSON: A missing comma or bracket breaks the entire block. Always validate after pasting.
• Skipping FAQ schema: commonly missed, and still worth adding, though not for rich results. Google retired FAQ rich results for all sites in May 2026. It earns its place now as entity markup: a question paired with its answer is the shape an assistant can lift whole.

The bottom line

Adding JSON-LD schema takes 30 minutes and is the single highest-impact change you can make for AI search visibility. Sites with comprehensive structured data get cited 3-5x more often by AI search engines than sites without. If you do one thing from this guide, add Organization and FAQ schema to your homepage today.