By Matt G. Southern
Publication Date: 2026-05-11 21:06:00
Schema markup is far more common in AI cited pages. However, a new Ahrefs report found that the addition did not result in a significant increase in citations.
Ahrefs tracked 1,885 websites that added the JSON-LD schema. Each page was matched against control pages that had never added schema, and citation changes were measured in Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, and ChatGPT.
No platform saw a significant increase in citations after adding the schema.
What Ahrefs found
The report analyzed 6 million URLs and found that pages cited by AI were about three times more likely to contain JSON-LD. This gap was seen as evidence that schemas improve AI visibility. However, Ahrefs tested whether this was true in isolation from other signals, as sites with Schema tend to invest in better content and earn more links.
They conducted a controlled comparison, comparing each schema page with three control pages from different domains with similar citation levels that never added JSON-LD. Citation changes were…
