By Iliass El Barhoumi · Published · Last updated
How is structured data scored?
Structured data is worth 4 of 100 points, 4 of the 60 in the Selected lever, which asks “Is there a passage worth quoting?” The engine scores it with these rules:
- 1 point for any JSON-LD on the page.
- 2 points for a content type worth declaring: Article, NewsArticle, BlogPosting, TechArticle, Product, HowTo, FAQPage, QAPage, Organization, Recipe, Course, SoftwareApplication.
- 1 point for every block parsing cleanly. A syntax error silently drops the whole block, so it is checked separately.
What does a pass and a fail look like?
| Verdict | Example |
|---|---|
| Pass | An Article block with headline, author, publisher and both dates, plus a FAQPage block for the visible questions, both valid JSON. |
| Fail | A JSON-LD block with a trailing comma left by a template edit. It looks present in the source and is ignored by every parser. |
How do you fix structured data?
In the order worth doing it:
- Add Article, BlogPosting or TechArticle to content pages, with author and dates.
- Add Organization once, site-wide, with a logo and real sameAs profiles.
- Validate every block, for example with the free schema generator or Google’s Rich Results Test.
A scan reports the evidence behind the verdict, such as the sections, paragraphs or tokens that failed, and the fix prompt hands the same evidence to a coding agent so it can make the change for you.
Related checks in the Selected lever
- What is answer-first writing? — 13 points
- What makes a passage extractable by an AI engine? — 10 points
- Do headings matter for AI search? — 9 points
- Does formatting change whether AI quotes your page? — 9 points
- Why do AI engines prefer pages with numbers in them? — 8 points
- Does an FAQ section help you get cited? — 7 points
Frequently asked questions
Does structured data help ChatGPT and Perplexity?
It removes guesswork. Structured data tells any parser what the page is, who published it and when, which are the facts an engine needs before it can attribute a quote.
Is JSON-LD better than microdata?
For new work, yes: JSON-LD sits in one block separate from the markup, so a template change cannot break it silently. Google recommends it, and it is the format this check reads.