SoftwareApplication schema

What it does for AI citation

'What is the best tool for X' is one of the highest-intent questions anyone asks an assistant. This type is how you become a candidate answer rather than prose the model has to interpret, and it is where the category and price live.

A working example

Paste this into a <script type="application/ld+json"> tag in your page head and replace the values. It is valid as written.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "SoftwareApplication",
  "name": "Example App",
  "applicationCategory": "BusinessApplication",
  "operatingSystem": "Web",
  "url": "https://example.com",
  "description": "What it does, in the words someone would use to ask for it.",
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "price": "49.00",
    "priceCurrency": "USD"
  }
}

What actually goes wrong

These are the errors that show up repeatedly on real sites, in rough order of how often we see them.

• applicationCategory invented rather than taken from schema.org's list.
• operatingSystem omitted on a web app. 'Web' is a valid and useful answer.
• A price that has moved since the markup was written. Structured data is a second place prices live, and the stale copy outlives the correct one.
• aggregateRating with no reviews behind it.

Markup is necessary, not sufficient

Valid SoftwareApplication does not buy you a citation. It makes your page legible, which is the precondition. Whether an assistant names you when a buyer asks also turns on your content, how current the page is, and who else on the web corroborates you. Any tool that tells you markup alone will get you cited is overselling.

Other types