{"id":7231,"date":"2026-05-12T12:10:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T06:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stanventures.com\/news\/?p=7231"},"modified":"2026-05-12T12:12:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T06:42:32","slug":"schema-markup-has-no-meaningful-impact-on-ai-citations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stanventures.com\/news\/schema-markup-has-no-meaningful-impact-on-ai-citations-7231\/","title":{"rendered":"Schema Markup Has No Meaningful Impact on AI Citations, Ahrefs Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

On May 11, 2026, Ahrefs published a data study by Louise Linehan and Xibeijia Guan titled<\/span> “We Tracked 1,885 Pages Adding Schema. AI Citations Barely Moved.”<\/span><\/a> The study set out to test whether adding JSON-LD schema markup to a page produced a measurable increase in citations across Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, and ChatGPT.<\/span><\/p>\n

The team identified 1,885 pages that added JSON-LD between August 2025 and March 2026, matched them against 4,000 control pages with similar pre-treatment citation levels, and measured citation changes 30 days before and 30 days after the schema was added.<\/span><\/p>\n

The results, based on a matched difference-in-differences analysis:<\/span><\/p>\n

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The AI Mode and ChatGPT figures sit close enough to zero that Ahrefs classifies them as random noise across thousands of URLs. The AI Overviews decline is statistically significant, with the report noting that the odds of seeing a gap that large by pure chance are about 1 in 2,500.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the authors flag that both treated and matched control pages were already on a steep downward trajectory before schema was added, and the absolute size of the decline averaged around 12 daily citations per page on pages that were receiving hundreds.<\/span><\/p>\n

The study ran four separate analyses, including a two-sample t-test, the matched difference-in-differences test, an event study tracking week-by-week citation patterns, and a re-run of the difference-in-differences with a symmetrical window. All four pointed in the same direction.<\/span><\/p>\n

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