---
type: Article
name: "What is structured data, for AI?"
id: "https://selfe.ai/insights/glossary/what-is-structured-data-for-ai"
url: "https://selfe.ai/insights/glossary/what-is-structured-data-for-ai"
publisher: "did:web:selfe.ai"
description: "A business's facts held as distinct, checkable fields, availability, price, terms, rather than as prose an AI agent has to read and interpret to extract the same information."
datePublished: "2026-09-15T16:25:20.643Z"
author: The Selfe team
---

# What is structured data, for AI?

> A business's facts held as distinct, checkable fields, availability, price, terms, rather than as prose an AI agent has to read and interpret to extract the same information.

## In short

- Structured data for AI means facts in distinct, checkable fields, not prose an agent has to interpret.
- It's shaped around what an agent checks, not around helping a search engine display a page.

Good for: Letting an agent check a fact directly instead of inferring it from prose. Not good for: Helping a page rank better, that's a different job, the one search-engine markup already does.

What matters is whether an agent has to guess, not how technical the underlying fields sound. A sentence describing a cancellation policy has to be parsed and might be read wrong; a field that states the policy directly doesn't. Structured data for AI specifically means fields shaped around what an agent checks, not a general markup vocabulary built years ago to help a search engine show a nicer result to a person.

## Good for

Letting an agent check a fact directly instead of inferring it from prose.

## Not good for

Helping a page rank better, that's a different job, the one search-engine markup already does.

## Act on this

- [Check whether an agent can buy from you](https://selfe.ai/agentic-commerce/buyability-check) — the free readiness scan.
- [Discover venues](https://selfe.ai/api/registry/discover) — `POST`, semantic browse across the registry.
- [Match a bookable answer](https://selfe.ai/api/registry/match) — `POST` with dates and party size.
- [Verify Selfe's identity](https://selfe.ai/.well-known/did.json) — `did:web:selfe.ai`.
- [Agent card](https://selfe.ai/.well-known/agent-card.json) — how to connect over A2A or MCP.