Why Schema.org and Structured Content Matter More Than Ever in the AI Era

Published: 9/23/2025

You might have heard the news over the past year. Many publishers have seen a meaningful drop in referral traffic from Google Search, in part because Google’s own AI summarization features are surfacing answers directly, reducing the need for users to click through to source sites. For instance, a report this past August found that Google’s “AI Overviews” (summaries that appear in search) are linked to a 25% drop in referral traffic for some publishers.

The New Gatekeepers: AI Models

Generative AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, and Gemini increasingly act as “front doors” to information. Instead of presenting a ranked list of links, they generate answers and those answers are only as good as the structured data they can reliably parse. Schema.org markup, clean metadata, and consistent content structures give AI systems the scaffolding they need to understand what a page means, not just what it says.

Why Schema.org Is Central

Schema.org has always been about giving machines context: this text is a product, that number is a price, this image is a logo. For years, the main payoff was rich results in search (star-ratings, FAQs, carousels). But now, the stakes are higher. AI models trained on web content are explicitly looking for these cues. Sites without structured data risk being overlooked or misunderstood, while those with clear schema are more likely to be cited, linked, and surfaced in AI-generated answers.

Explaining the Drop in Search

When Google or Bing traffic dips, part of the story is simply that fewer people are clicking links — because they’re getting answers directly in AI overlays, side panels, and chat experiences. But another part is that AI systems are deciding which sources to trust. Well-structured content, with schema.org markup, strong metadata, and clean taxonomies, is disproportionately favored in these AI-driven experiences.

The Takeaway

The role of SEO is evolving from “optimize for keywords” to “optimize for machines that need to understand your content.” Schema.org isn’t optional anymore — it’s a critical layer that ensures your brand and content remain visible in both search engines and AI-powered discovery.

In short: structured content is how we future-proof visibility. It’s not just about ranking higher; it’s about making sure our work is recognized and retrievable in the next era of information access.