Structured Data

When Google reads a page, it sees text and guesses at the meaning. Structured data removes the guessing by labeling each piece of information with an agreed-upon vocabulary, most commonly the one published at Schema.org. It tags this string as a business name, that string as an address, this number as a price, that block as a customer review.

It is invisible to a visitor. It changes nothing on the page itself. What it changes is what Google understands, and increasingly what Google is willing to display. Structured data is the mechanism behind the extras you see in search results, like star ratings, FAQ accordions, event times, and business hours.

People use the terms structured data and schema markup almost interchangeably, and for a small business the distinction barely matters. Structured data is the general concept of machine-readable labels. Schema markup is the specific vocabulary from Schema.org that almost everyone uses to do it, written most often in a format called JSON-LD that sits quietly in the page code.

The practical takeaway is the same either way. The right labels on the right pages give Google a clean, confident reading of your business, which it rewards with better understanding and richer listings.

For a Michigan service business, the high-value labels are the ones that describe a local business and its trust signals. Done right, they help in two concrete ways.

Off-the-shelf site builders rarely emit more than a bare-bones label, so most local sites leave these gains on the table. You can check your own with Google's free Rich Results Test, which reports what valid structured data it found and what is missing. If the local business panel comes back empty, that is a real, fixable gap. On MBI sites the labels are built in at the template level and kept in sync with the business details.