Does adding schema markup improve your ranking?

No. Schema markup won't lift your ranking, and Google doesn't claim it will. What it can do is make your listing eligible for extras in the search results, such as a price, a date or a breadcrumb trail, and those can win you more clicks from the same position. As for getting your business recommended by an AI assistant, the documentation OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity publish for site owners doesn't mention schema at all. So it's worth having on your site, just not for the reason you may have been told.

This is part of our series checking what small and medium businesses are told about marketing, where each claim is tested against what the company running the system actually publishes.

Our interest

We do SEO work, and structured data is part of it, so we have an interest in the answer. We describe it to clients the way this piece does: accurate markup that can make pages eligible for rich results, never a ranking lever and never a way to get recommended by an assistant. If you've been told your site needs schema to rank, ask us for a second opinion.

What schema markup is

Schema markup, or structured data, is hidden code that labels what's on a page: this is a business, this is its logo, this is a product and its price. Most of it uses a shared vocabulary called schema.org, and Google calls it "explicit clues about the meaning of a page". Your visitors never see it, but search engines and other software read it.

What Google says it does

Google says it uses structured data for two things. The first is "to understand the content of the page, as well as to gather information about the web and the world in general". The second is to show a page as a rich result, a listing with extra detail such as a price, a date, a breadcrumb trail or review stars. Its SEO starter guide says valid structured data "makes your pages eligible for many special features in Google Search results, including review stars, carousels, and more".

Eligible is the word that matters. Google's structured data guidelines say markup "enables a feature to be present, it does not guarantee that it will be present", and that having it "does not guarantee that your structured data will show up in search results, even if your page is marked up correctly". So markup gets you into the running for an extra. It doesn't win you one.

What Google does not say it does

Nothing we read in Google's documentation says structured data affects where a page ranks, and its guide to its more notable ranking systems doesn't mention structured data at all.

The clearest line is about what happens when markup breaks the rules. A penalty for bad structured data, Google says, "means that a page loses eligibility for appearance as a rich result; it doesn't affect how the page ranks in Google web search". So the worst bad markup can do is cost you the extras. If markup had any bearing on ranking, you'd expect the penalty to mention it.

What a rich result can do is win more clicks from the same position, because it takes up more room and tells the searcher more. Google's own introduction to structured data points to four very large sites that added markup. Two of them measured more clicks, one measured more visits and one measured people spending longer on its pages. Those are results for those four sites, not a forecast for yours.

What Google says about schema and AI search

Google is blunt on this point. Its page on AI features and your website says: "You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features. There's also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add."

Its guide to generative AI features lists "Overfocusing on structured data" among the things you can stop worrying about: "Structured data isn't required for generative AI search, and there's no special schema.org markup you need to add." The same sentence then adds that "it's a good idea to continue using it as part of your overall SEO strategy, as it helps with being eligible for rich results on Google Search". So Google doesn't require structured data, but it still recommends it, for the ordinary reason that it makes your listing eligible for extras.

What Google does ask for is fairly ordinary: content you can read as text, structured data that "matches the visible text on the page", and your Merchant Center and Business Profile details kept up to date. If you run a local business, the item on that list most likely to matter is a complete Google Business Profile.

What Bing says, and where it goes further

Of the two big search engines, Bing is the one that links markup to AI answers, and it does it carefully. Its webmaster guidelines say: "Structured data may support clearer grounding but does not guarantee visibility or grounding traffic. Markup must accurately reflect visible content." Grounding is how an AI assistant checks its answer against current web pages, or in Bing's own words, "the system that connects AI to current, authoritative information".

Bing's blog is warmer than its guidelines. One post says "Structured content, like schema-marked product pages, FAQs, and comparison tables, helps AI systems interpret and summarize your content more effectively", and that it "increases the chances of your being cited". Another, on product pages, recommends Product markup alongside IndexNow, a way of telling Bing straight away when a page changes: "IndexNow tells search engines that something has changed, while structured data tells them what has changed."

So Bing's blog says markup may help its systems understand and cite a page, while its formal guidelines stop short of promising it. Jordi Ribas, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Search and AI, has also written that Bing's grounding "powers nearly every major AI assistant in the market", which is Microsoft's claim about its own reach, and names neither the assistants nor whether any of them read markup. If you want to be found through Bing, start by getting your business on Bing, then use Bing's AI Performance report to see where Copilot cites you.

What the assistant companies do not say

This is the part schema advice tends to leave out. OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity all publish documentation for site owners, and not one of them mentions schema.org markup.

• OpenAI. Its crawler page explains how to let its search software in so a site can appear in ChatGPT search, and says nothing about markup. Its publisher FAQ names one kind of markup: ARIA labels, the accessibility labels that help ChatGPT's agent in its Atlas browser "recognize what each element does and interact with your site more accurately". That's about an agent using a site, not about which businesses ChatGPT names.
• OpenAI shopping. ChatGPT considers "Structured metadata from first-party and third-party providers (e.g., price, product description)" when choosing products, and merchants can apply to send OpenAI a product feed. So OpenAI describes feeds and data providers. It doesn't say whether markup on your own pages is one of those sources.
• Anthropic. Its crawler page explains the three bits of software Claude uses to read the web, and how to block each one. It never mentions markup.
• Perplexity. Its crawler page explains the two it uses, and how to let them through a firewall, which is the security service sitting in front of your website. It never mentions markup either.

So anyone telling you schema will get your business recommended by ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity is saying something those companies haven't said. They may be reasoning from how the systems work, or going on their own tests, but none of the three has published anything that supports the claim or rules it out. What the companies do say about how businesses get named is set out in our check on whether you can pay to be recommended by ChatGPT.

What has stopped working

Some schema advice is simply out of date, because Google has retired the results it used to produce. Google records every change on its documentation updates page:

• FAQ results. The FAQ rich result "will no longer appear in Google Search starting May 7, 2026", and Google removed the documentation on 15 June 2026.
• How-to results. Google removed the how-to documentation on 14 September 2023, as the result was "no longer shown in search results".
• Several specialist types. In June 2025 Google began phasing out book actions, course info, estimated salary, ClaimReview, learning video, special announcement and vehicle listing results, "as part of our ongoing efforts to simplify the Google Search results page". It later kept book actions.

So FAQ markup now does nothing on Google. It does no harm if the questions and answers really are on the page, but there's no longer any point in adding an FAQ section just to give the page some markup to carry.

Why it's still worth having

The honest case for schema is a good deal smaller than "it will improve your ranking", but it's still a case worth hearing.

• The rich results that still exist. Google still supports rich results for articles, breadcrumbs, events, products, job postings, local business details and organisation details, among others. So if you sell products, run events or publish articles, markup is what gets you in line for one of those listings.
• Your organisation's details. Google says Organization markup, covering your logo, legal name and contact details, "can show up in knowledge panels and other visual elements".
• Bing's AI answers. Its guidelines say markup "may support clearer grounding" in those answers, and they guarantee nothing.
• It can be nearly free. Google points out that your website system may have a search settings page, or a plugin, that adds structured data for you. On many small sites, this is a setting to check rather than a project.

Two rules come with it. The first is that your markup has to describe what a visitor can see on the page. Google says not to add structured data "about information that is not visible to the user, even if the information is accurate", and Bing says the same. The second is that accuracy matters more than filling everything in. Google says "it is more important to supply fewer but complete and accurate recommended properties" than to fill in every possible one badly.

One mistake is common enough to name. Google says pages about a business that use LocalBusiness or Organization markup, where the business controls the reviews about itself, "are ineligible for star review feature". Review stars on your own homepage won't show.

How to tell whether it's working for you

Google offers a test rather than a promise. Take a few pages that have no markup and several months of data behind them, add valid markup, check that Google has found the new markup, then compare how those pages do over the following months. It warns that this "can be a little tricky, since page views can vary for a single page for various reasons".

All of that happens in Search Console, Google's free tool for seeing how your site appears in Google, where the rich result reports show which pages have valid markup and where the errors are. Fix any errors you find, because broken markup is the one way structured data can actually cost you something: it takes the page out of the running for the extras altogether. Markup errors are also something a supplier should report to you, and they're on our list of what an SEO audit should include.

Questions to ask anyone selling schema work

• Which rich result will each piece of markup make my pages eligible for, and does Google still show it?
• Does every label describe something a visitor can actually see on the page?
• Are you adding FAQ sections or review stars? (Google no longer shows the first, and won't show the second for a business's own reviews.)
• If you say it will help with AI answers, which company's documentation says so?
• How will we measure the effect, and over what period?

Where that leaves you

Nobody outside OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity can tell you whether markup affects which businesses their assistants name, because none of them has said. What is clear is enough to act on. Keep your markup accurate, for the listings Google still shows, and don't expect it to lift your ranking or get you recommended by an assistant.