How do you use structured data to enhance search result appearance?

Structured data is the markup that tells Google and the AI engines what a page is about in a machine-readable form. The visible payoff is rich result formatting for the types Google still supports: review stars under a product, structured product information in a shopping result, expanded news listings. Note that Google retired FAQ rich results in 2026, so FAQPage markup no longer produces an FAQ accordion in the SERP – its value now is helping engines and readers parse a clean question-and-answer structure and lift accurate, self-contained answers. Beyond the visible formatting, structured data tells the engines what entity is on the page (Organization, Person, Article, Product, Event) and how it relates to other entities, which feeds the Knowledge Graph and influences how AI engines extract content. The reputation discipline is to apply the right schema consistently across the site: Organization on the homepage, Person on leadership pages, Article on press content, FAQPage on Q&A blocks for comprehension and extraction, BreadcrumbList for navigation. The cumulative effect on entity recognition and AI engine extraction is significant.