Schema markup won't get you into ChatGPT. Here's what it actually does.

Somewhere right now, an agency is sending a proposal with a line item called “AI Schema Optimization.” It costs more than the regular schema used to. It promises to make ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews “understand” your business. And it’s built on a claim the people who run Google Search have publicly contradicted.

The short answer: there is no special structured data that gets you into AI answers. Schema markup is still worth having for a few specific jobs. But if someone is selling it as your GEO strategy, they’re selling you the wrapping paper and calling it the present.

What Google actually says

This one isn’t a matter of opinion. Google’s own documentation on AI features and your website says, in plain words, that there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special schema.org markup you need to add.

What is required? The page has to be indexed and eligible to show in normal Google Search with a snippet. That’s it. The gate to AI Overviews is the same gate as regular search — which is why GEO and SEO overlap far more than the hype admits.

As for ChatGPT, Perplexity and the rest: none of them publish documentation saying they rank or cite sources based on JSON-LD. Their crawlers download your HTML, and your schema sits inside that HTML, so it’s seen. What they do with it isn’t disclosed. Anyone who tells you with confidence that “LLMs prioritize pages with schema” is guessing, and charging you for the guess.

So what does schema actually do?

Structured data is a standardized label on your page: this is a business, this is its phone number, these are its opening hours, this is a review. Google’s structured data introduction describes it as a way to help Google understand the page and make it eligible for rich results. Eligible. Not guaranteed.

In practice, it earns its keep in three places:

• Rich results in normal search — star ratings on products, event dates, recipe cards, breadcrumbs. Where your page type qualifies, these genuinely lift click-through.
• Consistent business facts — LocalBusiness markup states your name, address, phone and hours in a machine-readable way. Google notes this data can feed the business details shown in search and Maps.
• Disambiguation — Organization markup with sameAs links to your Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and Instagram says “these are all the same company.” Useful if your name is shared with a bakery in Ohio.

That third point is the honest bridge to AI. AI assistants name businesses they’re confident about, and confidence comes from the same facts showing up consistently across the web. Schema is one small, tidy place where you state those facts. It helps. It is not the thing that moves the needle.

The FAQ schema trap

Here’s a real-world example of how fast “schema tricks” expire. For years, stuffing FAQ markup onto every page was a favourite move: it made your result huge in Google, with expandable questions pushing competitors down the page.

In August 2023, Google cut FAQ rich results back to well-known, authoritative government and health websites. Overnight, the tactic stopped doing anything visible for almost every business that used it.

Now the same move is being resold as “AI-ready FAQ schema.” Same markup, new label, fresh invoice. The FAQ content is still valuable, because real questions answered in plain language are exactly what AI engines quote. The markup around it is a footnote.

What moves AI visibility instead

If you have a limited budget for “getting found by AI,” this is roughly the order we’d spend it in:

1. Make sure AI can read your site at all. If your content only appears after JavaScript runs, many AI crawlers see an empty page. Check what ChatGPT actually sees before anything else. No schema fixes an empty page.
2. Write answer-first pages. Put the answer to the question in the first two sentences, then explain. “A boiler service costs between X and Y, and here’s what changes the price” gets quoted. A 400-word intro doesn’t.
3. Get your facts consistent everywhere. Same name, address, phone, services and prices on your site, Google Business Profile, directories and social profiles. Contradictions make AI hedge, and hedging means it names someone else.
4. Earn mentions on other sites. Reviews, local press, industry directories, forums. AI trusts what others say about you more than what you say about yourself.
5. Then add clean schema. Organization or LocalBusiness, correct and matching your visible content. Plus whatever rich-result types genuinely fit your pages. An afternoon’s work, not a retainer.

Notice where schema sits: last, and cheap. That’s not because it’s useless. It’s because it only amplifies content and signals that already exist.

How to spot the upsell

A few phrases that should make you ask follow-up questions:

• “AI schema” or “LLM schema.” There’s no separate vocabulary. Schema.org is schema.org.
• “We’ll mark up everything.” Markup that describes things not visible on the page breaks Google’s guidelines and can get your rich results removed.
• A monthly fee for schema. Once it’s correct, it only changes when your business details change.
• No mention of content or crawlability. If the pitch is all markup and no writing, you’re buying the cheap part at the expensive price.

Ask them one question: “Where does Google say schema is required for AI Overviews?” The honest answer is that it doesn’t.

The bottom line

Schema markup is good hygiene. Do it once, do it correctly, keep it in sync with your real details, and stop thinking about it. The things that get a business named in AI answers are less glamorous: a site crawlers can read, pages that answer real questions, and facts the rest of the internet agrees with.

That’s what our GEO work actually focuses on, with the schema included rather than sold separately. If you want to know where your site stands, get in touch. And if the only thing you’re missing is a ten-minute markup fix, we’ll tell you that and send you the snippet.