what schema is, in one paragraph
schema.org is a shared vocabulary that lets you tell search engines what a page is about — not just what words are on it. a page can be 'about an organization' or 'about a local business' or 'about a service' or 'about a faq', and search engines that understand the markup show richer results, answer questions directly, or surface the page when an ai assistant gets asked something the page answers. it ships as a json blob in the page head. nothing changes visually.
the five that matter
organization — your business as an entity. name, logo, founder, address, contact point, social profiles, services offered. one block, on every page, identified by @id. this is the anchor every other schema type references.
localbusiness (or professionalservice for consultancies) — the address, hours, phone, geo coordinates. lets you appear in maps results and the local pack. one block, on every page.
service — each thing you sell. name, description, area served. one block per service. link it back to the organization via @id.
faqpage — questions and answers on your faq page. google uses these to populate 'people also ask' boxes and ai overviews. one block, on the faq page only — google requires the schema to match visible content.
breadcrumblist — the path through the site. one block, on every page that is not the homepage. helps google show a breadcrumb in serps instead of the raw url.
what google does with each one
organization plus localbusiness drive the knowledge panel — the right-hand card on a branded search. service entries surface in ai overviews when someone asks 'who builds homestay websites in assam?'. faqpage drives 'people also ask' and the question-answer cards. breadcrumblist replaces ugly url paths with readable trails in the search result.
ai assistants — chatgpt, perplexity, claude — read this vocabulary too. the same five blocks make your site easier to summarise and cite. structured data is a google-and-ai investment now, not a google-only one.
what to skip
product unless you sell physical goods. review and aggregaterating are only allowed for content you genuinely host, not your own claims about yourselves. event if you do not run events. recipe, jobposting, course — only if those words describe what your page is about.
validate every block at search.google.com/test/rich-results. write the json by hand or generate from your cms. the gap between zero schema and the right five is wider than the gap between five and fifty.