Schema markup for AI search

What Google has ruled out

The July 2026 optimization guide says it twice. In the best-practices section: you do not need new markup, and there is no special schema.org structured data to add for the generative features. In the mythbusting section: structured data is not required for generative AI search. The same paragraph says to keep using structured data as part of ordinary SEO, because it helps eligibility for rich results on the classic results page.

The December 2025 AI features page agrees, and adds the condition that matters more than the type name. If you use structured data, it has to match the visible text on the page. The general structured-data guidelines say the same thing as a quality rule. Marking up a performer the HTML never mentions is the example they give. A FAQ, a price, or a star rating that exists only inside a script is the same mistake.

A vendor page that tells you to add a GEO schema or an AI-citation type is inventing a signal Google’s documentation does not list. Ignore the type name and read the sentences a person can see.

The types that still describe a real page

Article or BlogPosting, when the page is an article. Person, when a person wrote it, with a URL that is their site. Organization, when a company publishes it. BreadcrumbList, when the visible breadcrumb is the path you mark up. WebPage, when you are describing the URL itself, including a dateModified that is the date you actually changed it. Product and Offer, when the page states a price a person can read.

This blog does that. Each guide is a BlogPosting with a headline, a description, a published date, a modified date, a word count, and the article text. The author is Kirill Zubovsky, the same person named in the byline, linked to kirillzubovsky.com. The breadcrumb is Home, Blog, and the article. The questions at the bottom of the page are repeated as FAQPage markup, and the words in the script are the words in the HTML. The title and the opening paragraph are marked speakable. Speakable is a hint about which passage to read aloud. It is not a switch that puts the page into Chat GPT.

The pricing page states the sentence in HTML: “DiscoSEO costs $99, one time. No subscription. Includes 100 personalized SEO + GEO actions.” The Offer in that page’s structured data is 99 US dollars because the sentence says $99. If the price changed on the page and the script did not, the script would be wrong. Match them in the same edit.

FAQ markup after the rich result ended

Google’s documentation updates say the FAQ rich result is no longer shown in Google Search results. A notice in May 2026 said the feature would stop on 7 May 2026. A later entry removed the FAQ rich-result documentation for that reason. The updates page is developers.google.com/search/updates. Writing three real questions on a page can still help a person, and it can still give an answer engine a passage. It will not produce the old FAQ dropdown in Google.

Keep FAQPage markup only when each question and each answer is visible. One answer per question. Do not use it as an advertisement that the page never asks. Do not paste the same five questions onto every URL. A question belongs on the page that answers it.

Dates, authors, and prices

dateModified is useful when it is true. Set it to the day the content changed, and show a date a person can see. Do not stamp a page as updated because a deploy ran. Do not set dateModified earlier than datePublished. A model that checks freshness is checking whether you are lying about it.

The author URL should resolve to a page about that person. An Organization node should use the company’s real name and URL. A price should be the price on the page, in the currency you charge. DiscoSEO’s price is $99 USD, one time, per site. There is no monthly figure to mark up, because there is no monthly plan required to receive the roadmap.

How to check your own markup

1. Read the page as a person. List the claims you would be willing to repeat: the price, the author, the date, the questions.
2. Open the JSON-LD and confirm each of those claims appears, and that the script adds nothing the page does not say.
3. Confirm there is one canonical URL, and that the URL in the structured data is that URL.
4. Validate the syntax. A broken script is not a signal. It is a typo.
5. Ignore any tool that grades you on the presence of a type Google does not document.

Rich Results Test and URL Inspection are Google’s tools for Google’s features. They will not tell you whether Chat GPT will cite the page. That question is answered, imperfectly, by asking, and it is written up on How to check AI search mentions.