The class of thing a piece of structured-data markup describes — Organization, Product, Article, LocalBusiness, and the like — telling search engines and social platforms what kind of entity a page represents.
| Term | Schema Type |
|---|---|
| Category | Structured Data, Social and Media |
| Also known as | Structured Data Type |
| Where it appears | Workbook Schema |
What it means in RankGear
In RankGear the schema type surfaces inside the Workbook Schema, which reads the structured data present on each analyzed page and records the schema.org type its markup declares. When you run a keyword, the workbook lists the types found across the ranking set alongside the type on your own page, so you can compare what kind of entity competing pages claim to be against what yours claims. The value is descriptive: it names the class of content the markup asserts, not how well that markup is written.
How to interpret it
Read the exact type against the page’s real purpose. A single page can nest several types — a Product wrapped in a WebPage, an Article carrying a Breadcrumb list — so identify the primary type that matches what the page is for and treat the rest as supporting context. A type carries more weight as a pattern across the ranking set than as an isolated flag on one page: if most pages that rank for a query declare the same type and yours does not, that gap is worth investigating. Confirm too that the declared type describes content a visitor can actually see on the page rather than claims added only for the crawler.
| Common type | What it describes |
|---|---|
| Organization | A company or brand as an entity |
| Product | A sellable item, often with Offer and rating markup |
| Article | A written piece such as a news story or blog post |
| LocalBusiness | A physical business tied to a location |
Example
Suppose you are optimizing a product page and open its Workbook Schema. RankGear shows that most of the top-ranking pages declare a Product type with nested Offer and AggregateRating markup, while your page declares only Article. That is a concrete, checkable difference: the ranking set is describing itself as sellable products with prices and reviews, and your markup is describing an editorial piece. Aligning the type to what the page truly is becomes a clear next step.
Important considerations
- Declaring a schema type can make a page eligible for a rich or social presentation, but it never guarantees a platform will render one — Google and social networks decide independently whether to display it.
- Markup should describe real, visible content. A type that asserts things a visitor cannot see on the page risks being ignored or flagged as misleading.
- The type a page declares is a descriptive fact, not a quality score — matching a competitor’s type does not mean the underlying markup is complete or valid.
- A schema type shared across ranking pages is a comparative pattern, not a Google ranking signal. It is correlation, not causation: adopting a type does not, on its own, make a page rank.
Related terms
Part of the RankGear glossary · how RankGear measures · the 870 factors.