Pillar 04 of 7
Pillar 04
Structured data.
The schema layer that AI engines actually parse.
Structured data is the schema markup AI engines use to understand and label your content. Six schema types matter most in 2026: Article, FAQPage, HowTo, Speakable, Author (Person), and Organization. JSON-LD is the format every major AI engine — Google, Bing, Perplexity, ChatGPT — reads.
Why it matters
Content with proper schema markup has a 2.5x higher chance of appearing in AI-generated answers. Perplexity's citation cards visibly use Article and Organization schema metadata for source labels. Bing's documentation explicitly states schema influences indexation behavior. The 'schema isn't parsed' claim is empirically wrong.
Editorial under this pillar
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No. 03 · Field guide
AEO vs SEO: a 2026 field guide
The five differences that actually matter — and the one thing nobody is saying about convergence.
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No. 05 · Editorial response
AEO is just SEO. Mostly.
Jake Zward is right about most of what skeptics get wrong about AEO. He's also wrong about two specific claims — and they're empirically testable.
Key terms in this pillar
- JSON-LD
- FAQPage
- HowTo
- Article schema
- Person schema
- Speakable
- BreadcrumbList