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Glossary / Where SEO meets AEO

JSON-LD

What is JSON-LD?

JSON-LD is the most widely recommended format for schema markup: a small script block of structured data sitting in a page's HTML, separate from the visible content. A subtlety matters for AEO: although it lives in a script tag, JSON-LD is static text in the HTML source, so crawlers read it without executing anything.

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In practice

Why it matters for AI visibility

That subtlety deserves spelling out, because it trips people who know one fact but not the other. AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript, so it sounds as if script-based markup should be invisible to them. It is not: a JSON-LD block written into the served HTML is just text in the page source, readable by any bot that fetches the page. What does break it is injecting the block with client-side JavaScript after load, a common default in tag managers and some CMS plugins, which leaves your structured data invisible to exactly the crawlers you wanted to inform. The test is simple: view the raw page source, not the browser's rendered inspector, and confirm your JSON-LD is present in what the server actually sends. Keep the markup in agreement with the visible page, and prefer server-rendered JSON-LD over anything a tag manager promises to add for you.

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