Entity and schema
The part of this subject with a mechanism you can inspect. Markup either validates or it throws errors. Your details either agree across the web or they do not. Nothing here requires you to trust anybody's dashboard.
Every engine covered on this site has to answer the same question before it can recommend you: which business is this, and is it the same business as the one in these other records? That is an identity problem rather than a content problem, and it is why this page sits under all four engines rather than beside them.
Being a thing rather than a phrase
A machine reading your site needs to resolve your company to a specific entity. A string of words that happens to appear on a page is not enough. Two contractors with similar names in neighbouring towns are a genuine disambiguation problem, and the way you solve it is by being consistent and explicit everywhere, not by repeating your name more often.
The markup that earns its place
Organization and LocalBusiness describe who you are. Service describes what you do. The properties that link your site to your profiles elsewhere are how a machine confirms those records are the same business. All of it is checkable: run it through a validator and you will know within a minute whether it says what you think it says.
Be sceptical of anyone selling markup as a route to being cited. Google's own guidance is that no special AI markup is required, and no engine publishes a schema type that earns a mention. Clear structured data is worth doing because it removes ambiguity about your identity, which is a real problem with a real fix.
The markup that does not
FAQPage rich results have been restricted to government and health domains since August 2023, and HowTo was withdrawn for commercial pages as well. Several companies on our board still list both among their answer-engine deliverables. People Also Ask is algorithmic and your markup does not drive it. If a proposal promises FAQ schema will get you into AI answers, that is a page written from an older playbook.
Consistency is an inclusion problem now
Your name, address, phone number and service area disagreeing across your site and your listings used to cost you a little ranking confidence. A model assembling an answer discards sources it cannot reconcile, so the same inconsistency can now cost you inclusion outright. This is unglamorous work and it is the highest-certainty item on the whole list.
Crawler access, the thing everyone forgets
None of the above matters if the engines cannot read the page. Your robots.txt is a file you can open right now, and it either permits the crawlers or it does not. Check it before you buy anything else.
In more detail
- The markup, field by field
- Organization schema for an HVAC company, including the field most contractors leave empty.
- Why consistency changed
- Mismatched details now cost inclusion rather than a little ranking confidence.
- What to stop paying for
- Schema types that do nothing for AI answers, with the basis for each.