# Structured data and AI search

> Google says no special schema.org markup is needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Structured data remains useful for rich results, where Google recommends JSON-LD, requires the markup to describe content visible on the page, and does not guarantee display. Whether markup changes AI citations is not established. One 2026 experiment found no gain on pages that were already heavily cited, and a 2025 test found that assistants fetching a page live did not use JSON-LD. A 2026 University of Toronto study found markup associated with citations only across websites, not within one, while a lab pipeline found structural information helped.

- URL: https://geo.casa/content-structured-data/structured-data-ai-search/
- Reference · Officially documented
- Reviewed: 2026-10-26

## For AI features

> **Officially documented:**
> Google says there is "no special schema.org structured data that you need to add" to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Among SEO practices that remain worthwhile, it lists making sure structured data matches the visible text on the page.
>
> Sources: [Google Search Central: AI features and your website](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features)

## Formats

> **Officially documented:**
> Google supports JSON-LD, Microdata and RDFa, and says all three are "equally fine" when valid. It recommends JSON-LD where possible as the easiest to implement and maintain at scale.
>
> Sources: [Google Search Central: Introduction to structured data markup in Google Search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/intro-structured-data)

## Guidelines that apply to all markup

> **Officially documented:**
> "Don't mark up content that is not visible to readers of the page." Markup must describe the same thing the page shows. If the JSON-LD describes a performer, the HTML body must describe that performer.
>
> Sources: [Google Search Central: General structured data guidelines](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/sd-policies)

> **Officially documented:**
> A structured data manual action makes a page lose eligibility for rich results; Google states it "doesn't affect how the page ranks in Google web search". Google also does not guarantee that correctly marked-up structured data will appear in results.
>
> Sources: [Google Search Central: General structured data guidelines](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/sd-policies)

## FAQ and HowTo rich results are gone

> **Officially documented:**
> Google deprecated the FAQ rich result in May 2026; it "will no longer appear in Google Search starting May 7, 2026". Google removed its documentation on June 15, 2026. FAQPage markup no longer produces a rich result in Google Search.
>
> Sources: [Google Search Central: Latest Google Search documentation updates](https://developers.google.com/search/updates)

> **Officially documented:**
> Google ended HowTo rich results in 2023. It first limited them to desktop in August, and as of September 13, 2023 Google Search "no longer shows How-to rich results on desktop", which made the result type deprecated. FAQ rich results were cut back the same month to well-known government and health sites. Google added that "there's no need to proactively remove it": unused structured data does not cause problems for Search but has no visible effect.
>
> Sources: [Google Search Central Blog: Changes to HowTo and FAQ rich results (8 Aug 2023, updated 14 Sep 2023)](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/08/howto-faq-changes)

## Microsoft: feeds, markup and the page must agree

Microsoft's guide for retailers on Copilot shopping describes three kinds of data: crawled web data, product feeds, and what AI agents read on the live site. Structured data is not a fourth source. The guide asks for prices and stock to match across the product feed, on-site schema and what shoppers see.

> **Officially documented:**
> Copilot breaks a shopping query down using crawled web data and product feeds. In Microsoft's example, a product makes the top three recommendations because feeds show a competitive price and in-stock status. The guide adds that "traditional SEO remains essential because AI systems perform real-time web searches frequently throughout the shopping journey".
>
> Sources: [Microsoft Advertising: From discovery to influence: A guide to GEO](https://about.ads.microsoft.com/content/dam/sites/msa-about/global/common/content-lib/pdf/from-discovery-to-influence-a-guide-to-geo.pdf)

> **Officially documented:**
> The guide's technical foundations start with deploying Product, Offer, AggregateRating, Review, Brand, ItemList and FAQ schema types. Price and inventory should sync in real time between product feeds and on-site schema. Values should stay consistent across feed, on-site schema and user-facing displays. Finally: "Ensure rendered DOM contains the same facts consumers see — never serve different HTML to bots."
>
> Sources: [Microsoft Advertising: From discovery to influence: A guide to GEO](https://about.ads.microsoft.com/content/dam/sites/msa-about/global/common/content-lib/pdf/from-discovery-to-influence-a-guide-to-geo.pdf)

> **Officially documented:**
> On agents: "Without your live site working properly, the sale fails even if your feed and crawled data were perfect." On claims, the guide warns against exaggerated or unverifiable wording, saying AI systems penalize low-trust language.
>
> Sources: [Microsoft Advertising: From discovery to influence: A guide to GEO](https://about.ads.microsoft.com/content/dam/sites/msa-about/global/common/content-lib/pdf/from-discovery-to-influence-a-guide-to-geo.pdf)

This is a marketing guide from Microsoft's ad business, not ranking documentation. It describes Copilot's shopping features, not AI answers in general. Its advice agrees with Google's guidelines above: markup must describe what is visibly on the page.

## What has been measured

> **Observed in practice:**
> Ahrefs compared 1,885 pages that added JSON-LD with matched pages that did not. Against the controls it found no measurable citation gain in ChatGPT (+2.2%) or Google AI Mode (+2.4%), and citations in Google AI Overviews fell 4.6%. All the pages were already heavily cited, so the study says nothing about pages that AI systems do not cite yet.
>
> Sources: [Ahrefs: We Tracked 1,885 Pages Adding Schema. AI Citations Barely Moved. (11 May 2026)](https://ahrefs.com/blog/schema-ai-citations/)

> **Observed in practice:**
> In searchVIU's October 2025 test, none of five AI systems reported a price that existed only in JSON-LD. Hidden Microdata and RDFa were ignored as well. ChatGPT and Gemini, which fetched the page live, found prices in visible text.
>
> Sources: [searchVIU: Schema Markup and AI in 2025: What ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity & Gemini Really See (2 Dec 2025)](https://www.searchviu.com/en/schema-markup-and-ai-in-2025-what-chatgpt-claude-perplexity-gemini-really-see/)

> **Research-backed:**
> A University of Toronto study of 158,099 AI answers (October 2026) found FAQ blocks, structured data, summary boxes and page speed effective only when different websites were compared. Comparing pages of the same website, markup was not associated with more citations. The authors say the results are associations.
>
> Sources: [Chen and Koudas (University of Toronto), arXiv:2610.15033: What Drives AI Citations? Content, Retrieval and Model Knowledge in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) (10 Oct 2026)](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.15033)

> **Research-backed:**
> SAGEO Arena (KDD 2026), a reproducible search pipeline over a fixed corpus of 171,003 web documents, found that using structural information such as schema markup helped mitigate the loss of visibility that existing optimization approaches caused in retrieval and reranking.
>
> Sources: [Kim et al. (Yonsei University), arXiv:2602.12187: SAGEO Arena: A Realistic Environment for Evaluating Search-Augmented Generative Engine Optimization (KDD 2026)](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.12187)

These are single studies, with limits listed in [Does structured data change AI search citations?](https://geo.casa/playbooks/schema-ai-citations/). The lab result (SAGEO Arena) and the field results (Ahrefs, Toronto) point in different directions, and this entry does not reconcile them.

## What is not established

- That adding structured data increases citations on pages AI systems do not cite yet. Neither study above tested it. See the open research design in [Does structured data change AI search citations?](https://geo.casa/playbooks/schema-ai-citations/).
- Whether structured data is used when AI features answer from a search index. searchVIU did not test Google AI Overviews or Bing Copilot.

## How this wiki uses it

Each entry outputs `Article` (or `CollectionPage` for hubs) and `BreadcrumbList` JSON-LD describing what is visibly on the page. It includes no rich-result types the page does not actually contain. See [Article structured data](https://geo.casa/content-structured-data/article-structured-data/) for why `Article` rather than a subtype.

## Sources

- [Google Search Central: AI features and your website](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features)
- [Google Search Central: Introduction to structured data markup in Google Search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/intro-structured-data)
- [Google Search Central: General structured data guidelines](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/sd-policies)
- [Google Search Central: Latest Google Search documentation updates](https://developers.google.com/search/updates)
- [Google Search Central Blog: Changes to HowTo and FAQ rich results (8 Aug 2023, updated 14 Sep 2023)](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/08/howto-faq-changes)
- [Microsoft Advertising: From discovery to influence: A guide to GEO](https://about.ads.microsoft.com/content/dam/sites/msa-about/global/common/content-lib/pdf/from-discovery-to-influence-a-guide-to-geo.pdf)
- [Ahrefs: We Tracked 1,885 Pages Adding Schema. AI Citations Barely Moved. (11 May 2026)](https://ahrefs.com/blog/schema-ai-citations/)
- [searchVIU: Schema Markup and AI in 2025: What ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity & Gemini Really See (2 Dec 2025)](https://www.searchviu.com/en/schema-markup-and-ai-in-2025-what-chatgpt-claude-perplexity-gemini-really-see/)
- [Chen and Koudas (University of Toronto), arXiv:2610.15033: What Drives AI Citations? Content, Retrieval and Model Knowledge in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) (10 Oct 2026)](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.15033)
- [Kim et al. (Yonsei University), arXiv:2602.12187: SAGEO Arena: A Realistic Environment for Evaluating Search-Augmented Generative Engine Optimization (KDD 2026)](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.12187)