Structured Data in 2026: Which Schema Still Earns Its Place
9 November 2026 / 5 min read
On 7 May 2026, Google quietly retired FAQ rich results. If you spent time adding FAQ markup to your pages, the extra dropdowns it used to produce in search results are gone.
That is a good moment to ask a question most businesses never do: of all the structured data we could add, which pieces are actually worth the effort?
Here is a practical answer for a service business, plus what is and is not known about schema and AI answers.
What structured data is, in one paragraph
Structured data is code, usually in a format called JSON-LD, that labels what is on a page in a way machines can read: this is an organisation, here is its address, this is an article, written by this person on this date. It does not change what visitors see. It tells search systems what they are looking at, and for some types it makes a page eligible for an enhanced appearance in results.
What changed in 2026
FAQ rich results were retired on 7 May 2026. They no longer appear in Google Search. The related reporting and filters in Search Console and the testing tool were phased out in the following months, with API support ending in August.
The FAQPage markup itself is still valid. Google has said that unused structured data does not cause problems for Search, so there is no need to rip it out.
HowTo rich results were retired earlier, in 2023, and likewise produce no search feature.
Google has not published separate schema rules for AI Mode or AI Overviews. Advice that claims otherwise is guesswork.
In short: markup that existed purely to win a visual feature has lost its reason. Markup that helps systems understand who you are and what a page is has not.
The types that still earn their place
For a typical business website, this is the short list.
Type | What it does | Worth having? |
Organization or LocalBusiness | Identifies the business, address, phone number and logo. Supports knowledge panels and local results. | Yes, on every site. Get it right and keep it consistent. |
WebSite | Names the site and its publisher. | Yes, once, in the same connected graph as Organization. |
Article or BlogPosting | Describes a post, its author, dates and publisher. | Yes, for every post. |
BreadcrumbList | Shows the page's position in the site as a breadcrumb trail in results. | Yes. Cheap and visible. |
Person | Identifies an author or founder and links to their profiles. | Yes, for named authors. Supports the experience and trust signals we discussed earlier this month. |
Service | Describes what a service is and who provides it. | Useful for clarity. Not tied to a specific rich result. |
Product | Price, availability and reviews for products. | Essential for e-commerce, irrelevant otherwise. |
Event, VideoObject | Event listings and video features. | Only if you run events or publish video. |
The types in the first rows are boring, and that is exactly why they are worth getting right. They establish identity.
The types to stop worrying about
FAQPage. Keep the questions on your pages, because readers and AI answers benefit from clear, self-contained answers. But do not expect a search feature from the markup, and do not spend time maintaining it.
HowTo. Same story.
Review and AggregateRating on your own business. Self-served review markup for your own services is not eligible for the star-rating feature in most cases, and misusing it is the kind of thing spam policies exist for. Show real reviews; do not mark up your own five-star average on your service pages.
Anything added purely because a plugin offered it. If you cannot say what a piece of markup represents on the page, remove it.
The mistake we see most: conflicting markup
The most common problem on business sites is not missing schema. It is contradictory schema.
A platform adds its own markup automatically. A plugin adds another. An agency pastes a third block into the header. The result is two or three "Organization" blocks with slightly different names, phone numbers or logos, and nothing tying them together.
When we audited our own site in September, we found four overlapping blocks: two describing the business and two describing the website, with no shared identifier connecting them. We are consolidating them into a single connected graph, where each entity is declared once with a unique identifier and everything else references it.
One of the fixes was in our blog template. Our posts used an invalid page type in their markup and were missing the publisher logo, which blocked article rich results across every post. Correcting the template fixed all of them at once.
Structured data and AI answers: what we know
Honestly, not much. Microsoft has said schema helps its systems understand content. For Google, there is no confirmed rule that markup improves AI citations, and one study found no correlation between schema coverage and how often pages were cited.
Our view is practical. Schema is not a lever for AI visibility, but it is an unambiguous statement of facts about your business, and consistent facts are a precondition for being trusted. Do it for that reason, and treat any extra benefit as a bonus.
A sensible schema checklist
One Organization or LocalBusiness block, with name, URL, logo, phone in international format, address and links to your real profiles.
One WebSite block, connected to it by identifier.
BlogPosting on every post, with a named author, publisher with logo, and accurate dates.
BreadcrumbList on inner pages.
The same name, address and phone number as on your Google Business Profile and in your footer.
Test with Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema.org validator.
Remove duplicates, and anything you cannot explain.
Frequently asked questions
Did Google remove FAQ schema? Google retired FAQ rich results on 7 May 2026, so they no longer appear in search. The markup is still valid and can stay on your pages.
Should I remove FAQ markup from my site? You do not need to. Google has said unused structured data does not cause problems. Prioritise other work.
Does schema markup help me appear in AI Overviews? There is no confirmed link. Treat schema as a way of stating facts clearly, not as an AI ranking lever.
Which schema should a small business use? Organization or LocalBusiness, WebSite, BlogPosting for posts, BreadcrumbList, and Person for named authors. Add Product if you sell online.
How do I add structured data on Wix? Wix generates some markup automatically and lets you add custom JSON-LD in the settings. Be careful that custom blocks do not duplicate what Wix already produces. See our guide to SEO on Wix.
Want to know whether your markup is helping or conflicting? Our free audit checks your structured data for errors and duplicates. Request your Free Website Audit →
