Schema Markup That Still Matters in 2026

Structured data used to come with a visible reward. Mark up your FAQs and you got an accordion under your listing; mark up a how-to and you got steps; add a search box to your site markup and Google showed one. Those three are now gone, along with a longer list of niche types, and the advice that recommended them is still ranking.

What remains is quieter and more useful. Markup that tells Google and the answer engines who you are, who wrote the page, when it changed, what the product costs and whether it is in stock. None of it ranks a page by itself. All of it removes ambiguity, which is the thing machines pay for. This guide is the maintenance list we now hand to clients: what to remove, what to keep, what to add, and how to check it.

What structured data does now, and what it never did

Structured data is a description of the page in a form a machine can read without guessing. Google uses it for two things: eligibility for specific result features, and understanding. It is not a ranking signal on its own, and Google has said so for years. A page with perfect markup and no authority still sits on page eight.

The visible side, the rich results, has been shrinking. Google's documentation updates page records a steady run of removals since 2023, and its search gallery now lists 25 feature types, several of which apply only to recipes, films, jobs or education. For a consultancy, a SaaS company or a shop, the useful subset is five or six types.

The retired list, with dates

Every row below was checked against Google Search Central's documentation updates page on 22 October 2026. If a guide you are reading recommends one of these for a rich result, it is out of date.

The types that still matter on a normal business site

The entity layer: the one job worth doing properly

If you do nothing else this quarter, do this. It takes an afternoon and it is the markup that still changes how machines treat the whole site.

1. 01

   Write one Organization block and put it on the home page

   Use the most specific subtype you honestly are: OnlineStore, ProfessionalService, or plain Organization. Fill name exactly as you use it everywhere, url, logo at 112 pixels or larger on a crawlable URL, and a description in plain words.

2. 02

   Add the identifiers

   iso6523Code with your DUNS, GLN or LEI if you have one, vatID and taxID matching the country in your address, naics where relevant. These are the fields that let Google tell you apart from a same-named company, and users can verify a VAT number in public registries.

3. 03

   List every profile in sameAs

   LinkedIn company page, X, Crunchbase, Wikidata if an item exists, review platforms, app stores. The same list should appear on your About page. Consistency across these is what makes an entity.

4. 04

   Give each author a real page and a Person block

   A profile page with the author's name, role, photo, bio and sameAs links. Every Article then points author.url at that page. Google asks for the name alone in author.name, no titles or honorifics.

5. 05

   Date honestly

   datePublished once, dateModified only when the content materially changed, both in ISO 8601 with a timezone. Changing dateModified to look fresh is the oldest trick in the book, and it is detectable.

What to do with the FAQ markup you already have

Thousands of sites added FAQPage markup between 2019 and 2023 because it earned a visible accordion. Since September 2023 the accordion was limited to government and health sites, and since May 2026 it is gone for everyone. The question we get most is whether to rip it out.

• The questions and answers themselves are more valuable than ever. Answer engines quote short, direct answers to real questions. Keep writing them, in visible HTML, near the top of the relevant section.
• The markup is neutral. It no longer earns a rich result and it does not hurt. If your platform generates it automatically, leave it. If you maintain it by hand, stop maintaining it and spend the time on the entity layer instead.
• Do not replace it with a trick. There is no substitute type that brings the accordion back. HowTo is gone too. Anyone selling a workaround is selling a manual action.

Validate, then stop thinking about it

1. Rich Results Test one page per template after any change. It reports only the types that still produce results, so it is also a quick way to learn whether a type is still live.
2. Search Console enhancement reports once a month. A sudden jump in errors after a release usually means a template change broke the generated markup, the same way a release can ship a stray noindex.
3. A release check: fetch one page per template, parse the JSON-LD, assert the Organization name, the author url and the dates are present and sane. It takes seconds when scripted and catches the drift before Google does.
4. Once a quarter, re-read the updates page at Google Search Central. The retired list above will be longer by then, and your markup should shrink with it.

The bottom line

• Remove what is retired: HowTo, sitelinks search box, FAQ rich result markup if you maintain it by hand, and the niche types deleted in 2025 and 2026.
• Keep and complete the entity layer: one Organization block with identifiers and sameAs, author Person pages, honest dates on every Article, Product data with policies on every product page.
• Mark up only what is visible, generate it from one source, validate per template after each release, and re-read Google's updates page quarterly.

Frequently asked questions

Does FAQ schema still work in 2026?

Not as a rich result. Google's documentation records the FAQ rich result as deprecated from 7 May 2026, with the documentation removed on 15 June 2026. The markup does no harm, but it earns nothing in Google Search. Keep the questions and answers on the page as visible text, which is what answer engines actually use.

Is schema markup a ranking factor?

No. Google uses it for eligibility for specific result features and for understanding the page. It can change how your result looks and how confidently machines identify your organisation, which is worth having, but it does not move a page up on its own.

Which schema types should a B2B or SaaS site have?

Organization on the home page with identifiers and sameAs, Article with author and dates on every guide, Person on author pages, Breadcrumb on every inner page, and Product with offers if you sell something with a price. That is usually the complete list.

Do answer engines like ChatGPT or Perplexity read schema markup?

They read the page, and the markup is part of the page, so a clean Organization or Person block can help them resolve who you are. None of the providers documents schema as a requirement, and plain, well-structured visible text matters more. Treat markup as a consistency aid for the entity layer, not as a lever for citations.

How this guide was put together

• Status and dates were read from Google Search Central on 22 October 2026: the structured data search gallery, the documentation updates page (including the entries of 29 November 2024, 22 January 2025, 12 June and 9 September 2025, 5 November 2025, 6 January 2026, 8 May 2026 and 15 June 2026), and the Organization and Article structured data pages.
• Recommendations reflect what we maintain on client sites and on this one. Where Google's wording leaves room for interpretation, the table quotes the documentation rather than our reading of it.

Sources

1. Google Search Central: Structured data markup that Google Search supports (search gallery)
2. Google Search Central: Documentation updates
3. Google Search Central: Organization structured data
4. Google Search Central: Article structured data
5. Google Search Central: General structured data guidelines
6. Lucidens: The Technical SEO Audit Checklist for 2026
7. Lucidens: How to Get Cited by AI Answer Engines