5 schema types that help AI engines cite you

Structured data spent a decade as a rich-snippet trick - markup you added so Google would show stars under your result. Generative engines give it a second life with higher stakes: schema is how a model reading your page at retrieval time knows which numbers are prices, which questions are answered, and which organization is speaking. When a model has to guess what a number on your page means, it hedges - and hedged answers don't name prices or brands.

You don't need all of schema.org. These five types cover most of the GEO value, in roughly this order.

1. FAQPage - the workhorse

Engines answer questions; FAQPage markup hands them question-answer pairs in exactly that shape. Add it to any page with a Q&A section - pricing, comparisons, docs. Two rules: the marked-up text must match the visible text, and each answer should stand alone, because that's how it will be quoted.

2. Product & Offer: make the price official

Product with nested Offer tells the model your name, what you are, and what you cost - price, currency, billing period as data, not prose. This is the markup that turns "pricing seems to start around $19" into "Pro is $19/month". Essential on pricing pages; for SaaS, SoftwareApplication with an offers block does the same job.

3. Organization - which name is yours

One Organization block on your homepage - name, URL, logo, official profiles in sameAs - anchors your entity. Engines reconcile mentions of your brand across the web, and this is the closest thing to a change-of-address form they accept: it tells them which name, which site and which accounts are canonically yours. Cheap to ship, and it helps disambiguate brands with generic names.

4. Article and BlogPosting

Article/BlogPosting markup (headline, date, publisher) tells a retrieval engine how fresh a page is and who published it. Freshness matters: when two sources conflict, the engine has to decide which to trust, and a clearly-dated recent page beats an undated one.

5. BreadcrumbList (yes, really)

The humblest of the five, but it tells the model where a page sits in your site - that this is Docs → API → Authentication, not a random orphan page. Context improves both retrieval matching and how the engine describes the page when citing it.

Shipping it without making a mess

• Use JSON-LD in a <script type="application/ld+json"> tag - easier to maintain than inline microdata.
• Never mark up content that isn't visible on the page. It's against the rules and engines cross-check.
• Validate with the schema.org validator after every change - silently broken JSON-LD helps no one.
• Keep it accurate. Schema that contradicts your visible page (an old price, say) actively teaches models to distrust the page.

An afternoon of markup is one of the better returns in GEO. Run a free audit to see whether engines are citing your pages yet - and which ones - in the sources report.