Definition
Schema markup, also called structured data, is standardised code added to a page that describes its content to search engines in a machine-readable way — that this is a review, with a rating of 4 out of 5, of a product called BrandX, by an author named Y, published on a date. It usually uses the schema.org vocabulary, most often in JSON-LD format placed in a script tag.
Structured data does not change what users see directly, but it makes the page eligible for rich results: star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, breadcrumbs, and other enhanced listings in search.
Structured data is not, in itself, a ranking factor, but the rich results it enables can substantially increase click-through rate, and it helps search engines understand and classify the page correctly. It must accurately reflect content that is actually visible on the page; marking up content that users cannot see, or ratings that are not genuine, violates the guidelines and can trigger a structured-data manual action that removes rich results for the whole site.
In context
For iGaming affiliate pages, the useful schema types are Review or AggregateRating on operator reviews (where a genuine rating system exists), FAQPage on pages with a real FAQ section, BreadcrumbList for navigation context, and Article or WebPage basics. Review markup in the gambling niche is scrutinised, so the rating must come from a transparent, consistently applied methodology, not an arbitrary number, and self-serving review markup with no visible review content is a known manual-action trigger.
The practical workflow is to add only schema that matches visible content, validate it with the search engine's rich-results test and the schema.org validator, and monitor the search console's enhancement reports for errors and manual actions. On a templated site, the markup is generated from the page's data, so a template bug can produce thousands of invalid or misleading structured-data instances at once — a missing required field, a rating outside the allowed range, an author with no name — which is why validation after any template change is essential.
Worked example
An affiliate adds Review schema to 500 operator pages using its published 20-point scoring methodology, plus FAQPage schema on the pages that have a real FAQ block. Star ratings and FAQ expanders begin appearing in results, and click-through rate for the review section rises about 20% with no ranking change.
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Frequently asked questions
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