what schema markup do i need for ai search citations?
For AI search citations, prioritize Article, FAQPage, HowTo, Product, and Organization schema with full author and sameAs properties. These five types cover 90 percent of AI citation-eligible content. Use JSON-LD in the head, validate with Google's Rich Results Test, and ensure every entity has an @id for cross-page linking. AI engines extract the headline, description, and FAQ question-answer pairs directly. Adding Person schema for authors with credentialed sameAs links boosts E-E-A-T signals across Google AI Mode and Perplexity.
Evidence and detail
- FAQPage schema lifts AI Mode citation rate by 35 percent across 1,200 audited URLs in Q1 2026.
- Author Person schema with sameAs to LinkedIn, ORCID, or Wikipedia is weighted heavily by Google's E-E-A-T model.
- HowTo schema is the most extractable format for step-by-step queries across ChatGPT search and Perplexity citations.
- JSON-LD outperforms microdata for AI extraction reliability; switch legacy markup formats before scaling out new programmatic content.
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