Schema markup is far more common on pages cited by AI. But a new Ahrefs report found that adding it didn’t result in a clear increase in citations.

Ahrefs tracked 1,885 web pages that added JSON-LD schema. Each page was matched against control pages that never added schema, and citation changes were measured across Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, and ChatGPT.

No platform showed a meaningful citation increase after schema was added.

What Ahrefs Found

The report analyzed 6 million URLs and found that pages cited by AI were roughly three times more likely to include JSON-LD. This gap has been seen as evidence that schema improves AI visibility. However, Ahrefs tested whether this held true when isolated from other signals, since sites with schema tend to invest in better content and earn more links.

They ran a controlled comparison, matching each schema page with three control pages from different domains with similar citation levels that never added JSON-LD.…