Real Estate Agency Structured Data: What Google Really Shows

Structured data, often called schema markup, is a few lines of code, invisible to visitors, that tell a search engine what a page already shows: the agency's name, address, opening hours and logo, and where the page sits in the site. For an estate agent, Google currently turns little of it into anything visible (business details, logo, breadcrumbs), and three common promises are wrong: there is no "property listing" rich result, FAQ rich results no longer show, and stars on reviews you control are refused.

Sources: Google Search Central documentation, schema.org, Microsoft Bing, OpenAI and Perplexity, read on 7 November 2026. It is written for estate agents and real estate agencies with their own real estate website, and builds on our real estate agency SEO and GEO guide.

Structured data in one sentence

For Google, structured data "is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content". The shared vocabulary is schema.org, founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex. Google recommends JSON-LD, "the easiest solution for website owners to implement and maintain at scale".

The basic rule: the code describes what the visitor sees, so "don't add structured data about information that is not visible to the user, even if the information is accurate."

And nothing is promised. "Google does not guarantee that your structured data will show up in search results", its general guidelines warn. The schema.org FAQ says the same: "Not every type of information in schema.org will be surfaced in search results".

What Google actually shows for an estate agency

Google's structured data gallery, last updated on 16 October 2026, lists 25 features. Three apply to an agency:

• Local business: "Business details displayed in the Google knowledge panel, including open hours, ratings, directions, and actions to book appointments or order items."
• Organization: logo, legal name, address and contact details, which "can show up in knowledge panels and other visual elements".
• Breadcrumb: "Navigation that indicates the page's position in the site hierarchy."

None of them covers property listings. The closest, vacation rental, is intended "for sites that have already connected with a Google Technical Account Manager and have access to the Hotel Center".

What no longer shows

• FAQ. On 8 August 2023, Google announced that FAQ rich results "will only be shown for well-known, authoritative government and health websites". Then, according to its changelog, the feature "will no longer appear in Google Search starting May 7, 2026"; its documentation was removed on 15 June 2026. No site gets it any more.
• Stars on your own reviews. Since 16 September 2019, Google calls a review "self-serving" when it sits on the website of the business it reviews, "either directly in their markup or via an embedded third-party widget", and shows no review stars for it.
• The sitelinks search box. Removed on 29 November 2024: the feature "is no longer available in Google Search results".

In June 2025, Google announced it would be "phasing out support for a few structured data features in Search".

The four markups worth adding

1. The agency, as RealEstateAgent

The schema.org type RealEstateAgent ("A real-estate agent.") is a subtype of LocalBusiness, itself filed under both Organization and Place. Google's LocalBusiness documentation says: "Use the most specific LocalBusiness sub-type possible". For an estate agent, this is the one.

Two properties are required, name and address; phone number, opening hours and website address are recommended. Where to put it: Google says it "may make more sense to put it on a page that contains information about your business", such as the home page or the contact page.

The key is consistency. Google's Business Profile guidelines want the business's "real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers". Same name, same address, same phone number and same hours everywhere. Our article on Google Business Profile for estate agents covers its settings.

2. The organisation and its logo

Organization markup can help Google "disambiguate your organization in search results" and influence "which logo is shown in Search results and your knowledge panel". "There are no required properties".

The logo "must be 112x112px, at minimum". The sameAs property points to your profile "on a social media or review site". And: "You don't need to include it on every page of your site." For a single-office agency, one block is enough: RealEstateAgent inherits the properties of Organization.

3. Breadcrumbs

On a property page: Home > Buy > Flats > Didsbury. BreadcrumbList markup describes it with "at least two ListItems", following "a typical user path to a page, instead of mirroring the URL structure".

One limit: "This feature is available on desktop in all regions and languages where Google Search is available."

4. Listings, if and only if the page shows them

Schema.org offers RealEstateListing: "A RealEstateListing is a listing that describes one or more real-estate Offers (whose businessFunction is typically to lease out, or to sell)". The type is still in the "new" area of the vocabulary. The price goes in an Offer, with the currency in "ISO 4217 currency format": GBP in the UK, USD in the US.

Google turns none of this into a rich result; it only notes that schema.org attributes it doesn't need "may be useful for other search engines, services, tools, and platforms". It comes last, on three conditions: the markup sits on the listing page, it repeats the price, size and area the visitor reads, and it follows the listing, because Google asks you to "Provide up-to-date information". A sold property doesn't stay marked up as for sale.

Don't dress a listing up as another type to win stars or a price: "Your structured data must be a true representation of the page content."

A short example for a fictional agency

Example Estates does not exist: its address, postcode, phone number and website are fictional. This block goes in the code of the contact page, inside a script tag of type application/ld+json.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "RealEstateAgent",
  "name": "Example Estates",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/",
  "logo": "https://www.example.com/logo.png",
  "telephone": "+441610000000",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "1 Example Street",
    "addressLocality": "Manchester",
    "postalCode": "M20 9ZZ",
    "addressCountry": "GB"
  },
  "openingHoursSpecification": [
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday"],
      "opens": "09:00",
      "closes": "17:30"
    },
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": "Saturday",
      "opens": "09:00",
      "closes": "13:00"
    }
  ]
}

What to look for: name and address, identical to the Business Profile; the phone number with its country code and area code, as Google asks; addressCountry as a two-letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code (GB for the United Kingdom); the days in English (Monday). No reviews: they would not earn stars. In the US, the same block takes the state in addressRegion and the ZIP code in postalCode, as in Google's example ("NY", "10019"), with US and a +1 number.

The table: what to mark up, and why

On FAQ markup, Google says so itself: "Structured data that's not being used does not cause problems for Search, but also has no visible effects in Google Search."

Common mistakes

Markup that doesn't match the page

Hours that differ from those on the page, a sold property still marked up: "Structured data does not match content" is one of the issues listed among Google's manual actions. The effect, according to its guidelines: the page "loses eligibility for appearance as a rich result; it doesn't affect how the page ranks in Google web search". But breaking a quality guideline can keep valid markup out of rich results, "or possibly cause it to be marked as spam".

Fake reviews, or reviews about yourself

The general guidelines rule out marking up "irrelevant or misleading content, such as fake reviews". Since 24 July 2026, the review snippet guidelines also say: "Don't include fake or undisclosed incentivized reviews on your page or in your structured data markup." And when the business controls the reviews about itself, "their pages that use LocalBusiness or any other type of Organization structured data are ineligible for star review feature". That covers an embedded widget too, "for example, Google Business reviews or Facebook reviews widget".

The law adds its own rules. In the UK, Schedule 20 to the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 has listed since 6 April 2025, among practices "in all circumstances considered unfair", submitting or commissioning "a fake consumer review" or "a consumer review that conceals the fact it has been incentivised". In the US, the FTC rule at 16 CFR Part 465, in effect since 21 October 2024, bars a business from writing, creating or selling fake reviews and from rewarding reviews "expressing a particular sentiment, whether positive or negative".

Several branches, badly separated

Google asks you to "Define each local business location as a LocalBusiness type". The Business Profile guidelines add: "There should only be one profile per business". The right shape:

1. one page per branch, with its own RealEstateAgent block, identical to that branch's Business Profile;
2. on the home page, an Organization block for the group; schema.org provides parentOrganization to link each branch to it.

How to check

1. The Rich Results Test: enter the page URL or paste the code. It ignores comments in JSON-LD, but Search Console Help says: "Be sure to remove any comments from JSON-LD before publishing your final page."
2. The URL Inspection tool in Search Console: the page as Google sees it.
3. The rich result reports, under "Enhancements": breadcrumbs and review snippets each have one, and the reports "show a sample of detected items". The agency block has no report of its own: the test and the inspection are enough.
4. The Manual Actions report, once a quarter.
5. Measure: Google suggests "a before and after test on a few pages on your site", recorded over a few months in the Performance report.

Do AI tools read this markup?

Google (AI Overviews and AI Mode). Its page on AI features and your website: "There's also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add." It recommends "Making sure your structured data matches the visible text on the page". Its guide to optimising for generative AI features lists "Overfocusing on structured data" among the things you don't need to do: "Structured data isn't required for generative AI search", but "it's a good idea to continue using it as part of your overall SEO strategy, as it helps with being eligible for rich results on Google Search."

Microsoft (Bing and Copilot). Bing's Webmaster Guidelines: "Structured data may support clearer grounding but does not guarantee visibility or grounding traffic. Markup must accurately reflect visible content." In a Microsoft Advertising post dated 8 October 2025, a principal product manager at Microsoft Bing writes: "Schema is a type of code that helps search engines and AI systems understand your content."

OpenAI (ChatGPT). Neither the documentation on its crawlers nor the help page on ChatGPT search mentions structured data. The only mention we found concerns shopping: ChatGPT considers "Structured metadata from first-party and third-party providers (e.g., price, product description)", according to its shopping help page. Nothing says that ChatGPT reads a website's JSON-LD.

Perplexity. Its crawlers page doesn't mention it, and we found no Perplexity page on the subject.

In practice, what matters must be written on the page (Bing: "Important information is visible on the URL itself"). The code confirms the text; it doesn't replace it.

What Cleemo offers

Listing markup is only worth something if the listing behind it is accurate. With Cleemo's real estate software and AI agents, each agency has its own AI assistant, isolated from the others. It finds information in the agency's files, reads its documents and prepares a listing or a draft reply; a listing is published only after your approval, and the assistant's actions are logged. Cleemo App brings sales, property management and CRM together in one application, usable without AI; Cleemo AI adds the assistant to it, or works around the agency's current software, depending on its access. The AI employees page describes each role.

Frequently asked questions

Does structured data help an estate agency rank higher on Google?

The Google pages read for this article don't present it as a ranking factor: they talk about understanding the page and about rich results, with no guarantee. The visible gain is limited to business details, the logo and breadcrumbs on desktop.

Should I still add FAQPage markup?

Not for Google: FAQ rich results have not appeared since 7 May 2026. Old markup does no harm, but it has no visible effect. Keep the FAQ itself, written on the page.

Can I show my Google review stars in search results?

No. A page that marks up the agency (LocalBusiness or Organization) gets no stars if the agency controls the reviews, even through an embedded Google reviews widget. Your reviews show on your Business Profile.

Which schema.org type should a real estate agency use?

RealEstateAgent, the LocalBusiness subtype made for estate agents. Only the name and the address are required.

Should I mark up every property listing?

It isn't a priority: Google has no rich result for property listings. If you do it, the markup repeats what the listing shows and disappears with it once the property is sold.

Does ChatGPT read the structured data on my website?

OpenAI doesn't say: its pages on its crawlers and on search don't mention it. Microsoft writes that this markup helps search engines and AI systems understand a page; Google, that no special schema.org markup is needed for its AI features.

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