Schema earns its effort when its type maps to a search feature or answer surface the page can realistically win, and wastes it when the markup only satisfies a validator with no eligible feature behind it. That single test is what separates a worthwhile hour from a busy one, and it cuts directly against the habit of marking up everything on the assumption that more structured data is always better SEO. Effort should follow eligibility, not completeness.
The reason the test matters is that schema.org and Google’s rich result program are not the same size. The vocabulary runs to hundreds of types and thousands of properties, while only a limited subset actually triggers a feature in Google Search, somewhere in the low dozens of types as of 2026. A markup block can be perfectly valid and still produce nothing visible, because no feature exists for it on that kind of page. FAQ markup dropped onto a service page is the clearest example: it validates, it adds no display, and it spends crawl attention on code that can never surface.
Where schema does pay off, it is because the type genuinely fits the content and a live feature stands behind it. Product markup on a real product, with price and availability, can earn an enhanced listing. LocalBusiness on a real location, Event on a real event, Article on genuine articles, all of these clear the bar because the page is eligible for something and good enough to be chosen for it. What decides it is not how complete the markup is, but whether there is a result to win.
So before spending time on any markup, the strategist checks whether a real result feature exists for that type and that page, and treats the answer to that question as the thing that decides whether to proceed at all.