The Schema Markup Most Businesses Are Missing

Most UK businesses have some schema markup on their website. But they are often missing the types that matter most for AI search. Organisation schema remains widely absent, Person schema is rarely used, and Speakable markup is used by fewer than 10% of sites. The problem is usually not absent schema. It is the wrong schema. (Note: Google has deprecated FAQPage schema, so put question-and-answer content in the page body rather than relying on FAQ markup.)

The schema that matters for AI

Not all schema types are equal for AI visibility. Google's traditional rich results and AI platforms prioritise different types. A site might have perfect Product and Article schema, earning rich snippets in Google. But it may lack the Organisation and Person schema that AI platforms use to decide whether to cite it.

Schema type	AI impact	Typical gap
Organisation	Entity verification - AI cross-references with GBP, LinkedIn, Crunchbase	Widely missing on SME sites
Person	Author credibility - helps AI connect content to a known, credentialed author	Rarely implemented
Article	Content typing - signals authored, dated content	Common, but often without linked author
Speakable	Content extraction signal - marks quotable passages	Used by fewer than 10% of sites

The Organisation schema gap

A large share of UK SME websites have no Organisation schema at all. Without it, AI platforms cannot reliably machine-read your business name, type, or location, or verify your identity across platforms. The sameAs property links to your LinkedIn, GBP, and other profiles. It is the entity verification layer AI uses to build confidence in your brand. No Organisation schema means no verifiable entity.

Organisation schema is the identity foundation. Everything else builds on it. A site with Article schema but no Organisation schema has structured content without a structured identity. The AI knows what the content says. It has lower confidence in who is saying it.

The Person schema gap

Person schema is one of the biggest competitive gaps in AI search because so few sites use it. Content attributed to a named, credentialed author with Person schema gives AI a clearer reason to trust it than anonymous content. Most businesses are leaving this advantage on the table.

Person schema is particularly impactful for:

Professional services - solicitors, accountants, consultants with verifiable qualifications
Healthcare - practitioners with medical credentials
B2B - thought leaders with industry expertise
Content-heavy sites - blogs, publications, and educational content

The question-and-answer gap

Many sites have FAQ content visible on their pages: accordion sections, question-and-answer blocks, support pages. In the past, sites paired this with FAQPage schema. Google has since deprecated FAQPage rich results, so the right move now is to keep clear question-and-answer content in the page body, written so it can be lifted directly into an AI answer. You do not need FAQ markup to benefit; you need clear, self-contained answers.

The Speakable gap

Speakable markup is used by fewer than 10% of websites. It marks specific content sections as suitable for direct extraction, effectively telling AI which passages are most quotable. Most web developers have never heard of it, and popular CMS plugins do not include it, so it is a genuine first-mover opportunity. We do not claim a specific citation uplift for it, because the credible public data is thin.

Priority order for implementation

If your site is missing multiple schema types, implement them in this order:

Organisation schema - the identity foundation (takes 30 minutes to implement)
Clear question-and-answer content in the page body - highest citation impact, lowest effort (no FAQ markup needed)
Article + Person schema for content - attribute content to credentialed authors
Speakable on key pages - mark your most citable paragraphs
HowTo schema on instructional content - structure step-by-step guides
BreadcrumbList - signal site structure and topic hierarchy

Quick wins

Most of these fixes are quick wins that require no content changes:

Organisation schema: 30 minutes to write and add to your homepage
Clear question-and-answer blocks in the body of existing pages: 15 minutes per page
Person schema for your team: 20 minutes per person
Speakable on key articles: 10 minutes per page

The total investment to close these gaps is typically a few hours of technical work. The impact - measured in AI citation probability - is substantial and immediate.

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