If you have spent time adding JSON-LD schema markup to your website hoping to boost your presence in AI search results, a major study published in May 2026 has news worth hearing: schema markup, added on its own, produces no meaningful increase in AI citations. Meanwhile, a separate study of 800,000 AI responses found that businesses with active review profiles are cited 75 times more often than businesses without any. The gap between "what practitioners optimize for" and "what AI engines actually reward" has rarely been this clear.
The Ahrefs Study: Schema Didn't Move the Needle
In May 2026, Ahrefs published a controlled study tracking 1,885 web pages that added JSON-LD structured data between August 2025 and March 2026. Each treated page was matched against control pages that had never added schema. Researchers then measured citation changes across Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, and ChatGPT.
The results were unambiguous:
- Google AI Overviews: −4.6% relative to controls (a small negative movement)
- Google AI Mode: +2.4% (within statistical noise)
- ChatGPT: +2.2% (within statistical noise)
None of these numbers cleared the threshold for statistical significance. Adding schema produced no meaningful uplift on any platform. The researchers noted an important distinction: pages with schema are cited roughly three times more often than pages without in raw correlation data — but that reflects overall site quality, not the schema itself. High-quality sites tend to implement schema as part of a broader technical effort; the schema is not the cause of citations.
The Ahrefs team also tested how five major AI systems — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Mode — actually process a page during retrieval. All five extracted only the visible HTML content. None used the JSON-LD structured data. Schema may help Google's indexing pipeline, but by the time an AI model is deciding whether to cite your page, it is reading your words, not your markup.
The Trustpilot Study: Reviews Take You from 1% to 75.3%
In March 2026, Trustpilot and Seer Interactive published a study analyzing over 800,000 AI responses across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode. The findings were striking:
- Businesses with no active review profile: cited in just 1% of AI answers
- Businesses that established a Trustpilot presence: citation rate jumped to 53.5%
- Businesses with 80+ reviews and active responses: citation rate reached 75.3%
Review and trust platforms are now the second most cited source type in AI responses, accounting for 14% of all citations. Among review platforms, Trustpilot was the most frequently cited across all four AI systems studied. For businesses that want to appear in AI answers, building a presence on a major third-party review platform is a direct citation-building strategy, not just a marketing nicety.
Google Also Removed FAQ Rich Results
There is a second schema-related development worth noting: on May 7, 2026, Google officially removed FAQ rich results from Google Search. Any FAQPage structured data already deployed on your site is now inert — it produces no SERP feature and no visible benefit. Google's Rich Results Test and Search Console will stop supporting FAQ schema entirely by August 2026. If this was on your technical SEO checklist, you can deprioritize or remove it.
The Practical Checklist for SMBs
Based on these studies, here is where small and medium businesses should redirect their GEO efforts:
- Claim and complete your review profiles: Trustpilot, Google Business Profile, and Clutch (for service businesses) are the highest-leverage starting points given the citation data.
- Respond to every review: The citation uplift from 53.5% to 75.3% came not just from volume, but from actively responding. AI systems interpret your responses as a credibility signal.
- Keep your Organization schema in place: While schema alone does not move citations, well-implemented Organization and LocalBusiness schema still supports Google's indexing pipeline and entity disambiguation. Do not remove it — just stop treating it as the primary citation strategy.
- Deprioritize FAQPage schema: With Google having removed the feature, implementing it from scratch offers no return.
- Focus review effort on AI-cited platforms: Build on platforms AI engines actually pull citations from — Trustpilot, Google Business Profile, Clutch — rather than spreading thin across dozens of directories.
For New York businesses in competitive service categories — web design, SEO, professional services — the research makes the case plainly: the fastest path to appearing in AI answers is not a technical change to your website. It is a third-party voice saying you are credible. Schema tells machines you exist. Reviews tell them you are worth citing.
Sources
- Ahrefs: "We Tracked 1,885 Pages Adding Schema. AI Citations Barely Moved." (May 2026)
- Trustpilot / Seer Interactive: "Brands that build trust through reviews increase AI citations from 1% to 75%" (March 2026)
- Seer Interactive: "Study of 800K AI Responses: How Review Profiles Shape Brand Presence in AI Search"
- Search Engine Journal: "Schema Markup Didn't Move AI Citations In Ahrefs Test"