Capability 1 — structured, queryable data: content stored as records with fields, types and relationships so it can be filtered, sorted, searched, and assembled on demand

Capability: Content stored as records with attributes (fields, types, relationships) rather than as free-flowing prose — so it can be filtered, sorted, searched, and assembled on demand.

The defining contrast: "a paragraph describing our products" vs "a product table / database whose every row carries price, availability, and category."

Source: Industry-consensus definitional framing — see also schema.org structured-data primitives ([[schema-org]]) and the structured-data mechanics overview ([[structured-data-mechanics]]).

Confidence: Industry-consensus (definitional).

Best evidenced of the four capabilities for findability / citability: it pairs natively with schema markup (Google documentation — structured data makes pages ELIGIBLE for rich results, NOT a generic ranking boost ("enables a feature to be present, does not guarantee that it will be present")) and with the GEO-paper body-text levers (Aggarwal et al., "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization" (Princeton / Georgia Tech / Allen AI / IIT Delhi, KDD '24) — citations + quotations + statistics in visible text lift source visibility by >40% across queries).

Business types most served: retailers (queryable product data), service businesses with multi-attribute offerings (filterable service catalogues), real-estate-adjacent (queryable listings), professional-services with case-study libraries.

Why this matters for Candid: This is the deepest of the four capabilities and the one with the cleanest evidence base. The companion brief Research brief: the searchable, structured catalogue as a working tool — when records-not-prose pays off (June 2026) is essentially this capability expanded.