JSON-LD

JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is a structured data format that allows website owners to embed machine-readable metadata directly into web pages. It uses standard JSON syntax within a script tag in the page's HTML, making it invisible to users but readable by search engines and AI crawlers. JSON-LD is the preferred structured data format recommended by Google and is widely supported by all major AI search platforms.

JSON-LD enables you to explicitly declare what your content is about using vocabulary from Schema.org. You can mark up your organization details, product information, FAQ content, how-to guides, reviews, events, and hundreds of other content types. According to a 2025 study by Schema App, pages with JSON-LD structured data are 2.5x more likely to be selected as sources in AI-generated responses compared to equivalent pages without structured data.

For AI search visibility specifically, JSON-LD serves as a disambiguation layer. When an AI platform encounters your page about "Mercury" (the software company, not the planet or element), JSON-LD markup explicitly identifies the entity type, its properties, and its relationships. This disambiguation is critical for AI platforms that need to match content to user queries accurately.

Implementation is straightforward - JSON-LD is added as a script block in your page's head or body section. Unlike other structured data formats (Microdata, RDFa), JSON-LD does not require modifying the visible HTML structure. It can be generated dynamically by your CMS or framework, making it easy to maintain across large websites. The key is selecting the right schema types for your content and ensuring the marked-up data accurately represents what is on the page.