What it is
In plain words, before anything else.
A person reads your opening hours and understands them. A machine sees the same characters and has to guess whether they are hours, a phone number or part of a slogan. Structured data removes the guess: a small block of code, invisible to visitors, that labels each fact for what it is.
The vocabulary is called schema.org and it is used by search engines and assistants alike. It is the difference between a machine knowing you exist and a machine knowing you close at six.
What it costs you
The loss you never see happen.
You get left out of any answer that depends on a detail. Open now, near me, does massage, takes appointments on Sunday: each of those filters quietly drops a business whose details cannot be read.
It also decides how you appear. The businesses that show a rich result with hours and a rating are the ones whose markup said so.
Check it yourself
Do not take our word for it. Look.
This takes about a minute, costs nothing, and needs no account with us or anybody else. A finding you have confirmed with your own eyes is the only kind worth acting on.
- 1
Open your homepage, view the page source as above, and use find to search for the word schema.org.
- 2
If nothing comes back, you have none.
- 3
If it appears, look for what it says right after: a type of LocalBusiness, HairSalon, Restaurant or similar means your business is described. A type of WebSite or Organization and nothing else means the markup is generic and says nothing about what you do.
What we found
Out of 186 businesses we checked ourselves.
- 84 of 186
had no structured data of any kind on the homepage. Another sixteen had only a generic block that described a website rather than a business.
Counted from our own checks of 186 real businesses, measured on 2026-09-10, one count per business. No business is named and none of their reports is public. The full write ups are in what we found.
How we fix it
What we do, and what we leave alone.
We generate the markup from your real details, publish it, and keep it matching the page. It never states anything your site does not already say, because markup that disagrees with the visible page is a penalty rather than a boost.
Nothing about your design changes. Visitors see exactly what they saw before.
Next
The checks closest to this one.
- L2
What is llms.txt, and does a small business need one?
One plain text page that answers, in order, what you are, what you sell and how somebody reaches you. - L4
If a machine cannot read your prices, it cannot recommend you
Assistants asked to compare on price compare the prices they can read. A number in a picture is not one of them. - L7
A way to reach you that does not need somebody to answer
An assistant acting for a customer needs a way in it can actually use. A number printed on a picture is not one.
Is this one open on your site?
The free check runs all sixteen against your own address and tells you which came back clean, in the same plain words as this page.
Free. No signup. Takes about a minute.