Schema is useless for AI search

and other local search knowledge

March 16, 2026

Hi local SEO friends,

Here’s the local search tea of the week 🫖

All the AI SEO bros are telling you to use schema, but it turns out that it’s useless.

There’s been a lot of discussion about this lately, and Mark Williams-Cook’s recent experiment might give us the answer.

Here’s what Mark did:

He created a page for a fictional company called “DUCKYEA t-shirts”.

He didn’t include the address on the page. Instead, he added completely made-up fake schema code containing the address. It wasn’t real schema markup.

When he asked ChatGPT and Perplexity what the company’s address was, they returned the address from the schema. Even though the schema never used the label “address”.

What this suggests is that the AI models don’t actually care about properly formatted, correct schema markup. Instead, they appear to strip away the schema code and just analyze the text within it.

In other words, it wasn’t the schema that mattered. It was simply the presence of content on the page - even if that text was in some code.

So, it doesn’t seem like schema matters. Just put the content on the page, and the AIs will pick it up.

See what other local SEOs think in the LinkedIn comments.

2. How one simple GBP fix can unlock 7 new ranking opportunities

When this gym started working with Whitespark, we noticed they were only using one category on their Google Business Profile: “Gym”. That meant they were missing the opportunity to show up for a lot of related searches.

Using the Category Suggestions feature in Whitespark’s Local Rank Tracker, we analyzed what categories their competitors were using that our client wasn’t. After reviewing the suggestions with the client, we added several relevant categories:

  • Boot Camp

  • Yoga Studio

  • Training Center

  • Personal Trainer

  • Weightlifting Area

  • Weight Loss Service

  • Physical Fitness Program

Properly optimizing your Google Business Profile categories helps Google understand exactly what your business offers, so it can show your business for more relevant searches. In this case, adding these 7 additional categories opened up 7 new ranking opportunities for our client, as well as a:

  • 32% increase in keyword progress

  • 21% increase in total interactions compared to the previous month

  • 41% increase in total interactions compared to the previous year

  • 5% increase in total views compared to the previous month

  • 23% increase in total views compared to the previous year

This is a great example of how knowing your way around a Google Business Profile and having the right tools can help you identify new ranking opportunities that others miss.

We get results like this for all our clients. Check out our SEO Services to learn how we can help your business, too 👇️

3. This 5-minute GBP hack will make almost any local business more money

Here’s a quick tutorial 👇️

Instagram Reel

4. Catch up on the pod

The statistic that 90% of searches happen on Google is outdated. The real number is more like 73% according to new research by Rand Fishkin.

People are searching everywhere: Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, you name it. So, your business needs to be EVERYWHERE your potential customers are searching.

And for all the AI-obsessed local SEOs out there, guess what? ChatGPT only gets 2.8% of searches.

Why are you obsessing over optimizing for ChatGPT when it gets way fewer searches than Bing (which I know you’ve been neglecting for two decades)?

Find the platforms your audience uses, build your presence there, and I promise they will bring you a lot more leads than LLMs will. At least for now.

Claire and I talked about Rand’s findings in last week’s podcast episode. We also discussed:

  • AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It (Aruna Ranganathan and Maggie Ye)

  • The AI Prompt That Shows Why Your Contact Page Stinks (Andy Crestodina)

  • The perfect local business contact page (Darren Shaw)

  • Google Review Discrepancies (SOCi)

  • Google Posts 101 Workshop (Lisa Landsman)

Watch the full episode 👇️

🎧 Or if you prefer listening, find it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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