JSON-LD missing @context or @type: Google can't parse it

What it means

A JSON-LD block on this page is missing @context, @type, or both. Without @context, parsers cannot identify which vocabulary the markup belongs to; without @type, Google cannot determine what entity is described. The block is structurally invalid and produces zero rich-result eligibility — the highest-value, easiest-to-fix structured-data defect.

Why it matters

@context and @type are required, not recommended. Google's documentation is explicit: a JSON-LD block without both cannot be parsed and will not qualify for any rich result, no matter how many other properties are present. The consequences are concrete — no rich results of any kind, an immediate parse error in the Rich Results Test, and crawl processing wasted reading and discarding the block on every visit. Common causes are CMS plugins that emit incomplete templates when a field is left blank, markup written from memory with fields omitted, and partial copy-paste that dropped the boilerplate lines.

How to fix it

1. Open the page source and locate the <script type="application/ld+json"> block.
2. Confirm @context is present and set to "https://schema.org" (HTTPS, not HTTP).
3. Confirm @type is present and set to a valid schema.org type string (e.g. "Article", "Product", "Event").
4. Both fields must appear at the root of the block — nesting them inside another property is invalid. Inside an @graph, the wrapper supplies @context and each graph node supplies its own @type.
5. Validate the corrected markup in Google's Rich Results Test before deploying, and fix the CMS template if the block is plugin-generated.

When it's not a problem

There is no scenario where omitting @context or @type is acceptable for structured data intended to produce rich results. If a JSON-LD block serves a non-SEO purpose (internal application data embedded in the page), it should not use the application/ld+json script type.

How common is it?

237 audited sites in our corpus currently show this issue. The breakdowns below show which platforms, gatekeepers, verticals and countries are most exposed.