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Adding schema didn’t boost citations on any platform [Ahrefs SEO Case Study]
Posted by on May 11, 2026 at 5:24 pmYet another blow for the GEO Schema bros. marketing and Propaganda. Because no LLM OEMs actually said this – they felt they could parrot it for everyone and nobody would figure it out.
If you've been parroting it – thats fine – thats up to – but do not come for anyone just because you dont like this. You're free to run your own peer-reviewed case study (which requires evidence of an actual study).
Link:
https://ahrefs.com/blog/schema-ai-citations/
Adding schema didn’t boost citations on any platform
We tracked 1,885 web pages that added JSON-LD schema between August 2025 and March 2026, matched them against 4,000 control pages, and measured citation changes across Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, and ChatGPT.
Adding schema produced no major uplift in citations on any platform.
AI source Effect on citations Verdict Google AIO −4.6% Small but statistically significant decline relative to matched controls; (both groups were declining together, but treated pages fell slightly faster) Google AI Mode +2.4% Statistically indistinguishable from zero ChatGPT +2.2% Statistically indistinguishable from zero These percentages come from our most reliable analysis (a matched difference-in-differences [DiD] test).
In this test, both AI Mode and ChatGPT treated pages performed slightly better than control pages on average, but the differences are small enough that they could easily be random noise across thousands of URLs.
AI Overviews showed a 4.6% decline, which is small but statistically significant relative to matched control pages.
But that isn’t quite the full story—we’ll get into that in the next section.
So, overall, we can’t tell whether the schema did a tiny bit of good or nothing at all.
What to do if you dont like this report
Disprove it. Dont just put schema in a page and say "it was the schema" – test the corrollary. Test it across domains. Get peers to review your methodology like u/jakehundely.
If you're emotionally tied into rejecting, downvoting this or getting angry – then stop and breathe. Its a software system that SEO reverse engineers through testing and observation – not how confidently you can discredit people
A number of people – like PeterWhineFatClub, BoHumpus and MJMilian already went postal about this – its not going to get better. Rejecting it and attacking people won't help.Mods are not here to be abused or called names under the pretense of fair game or shooting-the-messenger in 2026 – this is irrational behavior and it wont be tolerated
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1 Reply
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I thought FAQ schema only helped with rich results for .gov and medical sites since like 2023? What would’ve happened if the study was only focused on those types of sites? All seems like a moot point now that Google has removed FAQ rich results support altogether as of 5/7/26.
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BUT BUT BUT BUT IF YOU ADD LLM.TXT IT WILL FOR SURE WORK BROOOO! PAY ME $300 A MONTH TO KEEP AN EYE ON THIS!
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Out of curiosity, was the content that was marked up the same or similar to the content for the control group? In other words, were the test and control groups set up in a way that eliminated other potential citation variables?
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Link to the case study?
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Google’s takeover of all the content that the world created in order to make them the biggest search engine on the planet is complete. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-drops-faq-rich-results-from-search/574429/
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You’re the one who had the meltdown while being intentionally obtuse.
A study that would actually support the point you were rambling about would compare:
Websites without FAQ sections
vs
Websites with FAQ sectionsThen measure whether those FAQ sections increased citations, visibility, or retrieval across platforms.
A test where existing content is simply given FAQ markup isn’t remotely the same argument. That only tests the markup itself, not the value of having FAQ content in the first place.
The entire point was that FAQ content is still worth creating regardless, because well-structured informational content is inherently useful for SEO and search visibility, even if the schema markup itself ends up making little or no difference. Most people can still use their existing Schema workflows and widgets and whatever.
And frankly, you shouldn’t be a moderator. I couldn’t care less how many millions of people your posts supposedly reach when the information is poor and delivered with a chip on your shoulder.
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Saw this on Reddit – how appropriate is this?!?! I wonder if we can get Edward Sturm to actually make this?
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Why is there so much drama in this subreddit 🤦🏻♂️
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[removed]
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I feel like saying theres no major increase and showing the 2% increase is counter to the message you want to convey. Truth is we are fighting for ranking on these tier 1 2 and 3 terms for seo as is, if you can boost citations by 2% with proper schema and llms.txt type of ai due diligence, you should do that, no? And even more so if youre in a highly competitive space.
Im not sold on the AI citation, the research ive done on my own and seen results from is mostly connecting blog articles to relevant topics on reddit. I run SEO for a niche saas product and the blog>reddit pipeline seems to be whats worked best for me. I do schema in every article, and we have llms text file, and to me if they dont hurt and dont take a bunch of time to implement it is more like preparation for when that becomes the norm for AI. Im not sure it will pan out to be super positive, but if it DOES then im already in an amazing spot.
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>A number of people – like PeterWhineFatClub, BoHumpus and MJMilian already went postal about this
The discussions between you and myself were around how Schema is needed for some rich results in Google, as outlined their Google docs. We never discussed how it might effect citations in LLMs.
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