On the contrary, structured microdata is used quite often by companies like Google and Facebook to understand your site better. Here are a few examples: Rich s

On the contrary, structured microdata is used quite often by companies like Google and Facebook to understand your site better. Here are a few examples: Rich snippets on Google allow you to customize your snippets in search: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99170 http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#38... Using microdata and Schema.org annotations you can control the snippet that is used when your article is shared on Google+: https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/snippet/ https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/snippet/ Google+ Local / Maps use microdata on your page to understand things like store hours, address, telephone number, categories, etc. http://maps.google.com/help/maps/richsnippetslocal/faq.html http://maps.google.com/help/maps/richsnippetslocal/faq.html In fact, in the Google Webmaster Tools dashboard there is a central place where you can go to verify that the structured data Google has extracted from your site is correct (and if not, change your markup). Facebook's Open Graph microdata format allows you to describe your site in a way that Facebook can understand. This helps when generating snippets or treating your content as media content when it gets shared on Facebook. For businesses / places they surely use this for phone numbers, address, services, etc. http://ogp.me/ http://ogp.me/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/concepts/opengraph/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/concepts/opengraph/ Using a logo annotation, if Facebook were to make a synthetic place page for your business or company you could imagine them looking at a logo annotation on your site to decide what logo to use. This stuff is commonplace.