Glossary — Implementation
Structured data means writing the contents of a web page not just as "a visual presentation for humans," but separately as "meaning for machines (AI)."
Suppose a restaurant page says "Tokyo Station Mae Ramen Yokocho, hours 11:00-23:00."
In plain HTML, the AI only sees "a blob of text." It can't tell whether "Tokyo Station Mae" is a store name or a place name, or whether "11:00-23:00" is the business hours or a wait time.
Add structured data:
{
"@type": "Restaurant",
"name": "Tokyo Station Mae Ramen Yokocho",
"openingHours": "Mo-Su 11:00-23:00"
}
Now the AI understands accurately: "Store name: Tokyo Station Mae Ramen Yokocho, business hours: Mon-Sun 11:00-23:00."
As a result, when someone asks an AI "Which ramen shops near Tokyo Station are open late?", the probability of being cited accurately goes up.
Implementing structured data is a foundational, high-impact measure for earning AI citations. Because AI crawlers can understand the meaning of body text in machine-readable form, the priority as a citation candidate tends to rise.
There are several ways to write structured data, but the Schema.org vocabulary x JSON-LD format is the current industry standard.
With this combination, you can express nearly all structured data.