The benefits that have measurements. The ones that have denials. Kept apart.

• Eligibility for a supported rich result when required properties are present and the feature still exists.
• Publisher case figures on pages that gained those displays: Rotten Tomatoes, 25 percent higher CTR on enhanced pages; Food Network, 35 percent more visits after enabling search features on 80 percent of pages.
• A shared vocabulary that names types and relations so a machine does not have to guess.

No. Google has said so repeatedly. John Mueller in 2025: structured data will not make a site rank better. In 2018 he added that markup can make it easier to understand what a page is about, which can change where it is considered relevant. That is targeting, not a boost.

A structured-data manual action removes eligibility for rich results. Google states that this does not affect how the page ranks in web search.

Because the case figures measure enhanced pages against unenhanced pages, or a before-and-after once features were enabled. They do not isolate markup from the fact of the display. They do not generalise to types with no display. Google’s own wording is that rich results may encourage users to interact. That is not a reliable, automatic CTR lift from having a JSON-LD file.

• Markup must match the visible content.
• Missing required properties means the type is not eligible.
• Self-serving reviews, inactive jobs, and types used only to decorate a page are how sites lose the feature.
• A graph that exists only after JavaScript runs is a graph some clients never receive.