Schema.org is a shared vocabulary for structured data. The project was founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex and is maintained as a community activity, partly through a W3C community group. Schema.org defines which types exist, such as Product, Organization and BreadcrumbList, and which properties belong to them, such as name, price or address.
Why does it matter?
Because search engines use the same vocabulary, you only need to describe a product one way. Most of the structured data Google supports uses Schema.org. Note that Google writes that for behaviour in Google Search, Google’s own documentation takes precedence over Schema.org’s. Schema.org has far more types than Google uses in its search results.
Example
schema.org/Product lists the properties a product can have. In JSON-LD you write it like this:
{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Product", "name": "City bike black" }Common mistake
Assuming every Schema.org type does something in Google. A type can be valid without Google having a special display for it. FAQPage schema is an example: valid at Schema.org, but since May 2026 Google no longer shows an FAQ display for it. What structured data does and does not do is explained in Structured data explained: what it does and what it does not.