Page 4 - SEO Mad Scientist 2020 Report

Schema Tests

Is Schema Used to Index?

Test Setup:

We wanted to see if Schema is used to index websites, because Google claims Schema has no
SEO value. In order to reduce outside variables, we tested a term that didn’t produce any search
results, "xqhtlukjertnu", by publishing a page on our website with FAQ Schema that only
referenced our made up term in the Schema code. We used a different made up term for H1 and
URL to act as a control since we already know Google uses these to index pages.

Test Results: January 25, 2020

After we submitted the page to Search Console and it was indexed, we went back and searched
again for our made up term. Even after Google crawled the page and reported the FAQ Schema
markup in our GSC dashboard, the page wasn’t returned. This tells us Google clearly does not
look at the content within Schema markup as an indexing factor, at least as it compares to other
on-page factors. However, this doesn't mean Schema can’t be used as an authority factor.

One thing is clear, Google doesn't use Schema markup to index pages, meaning if you only
reference a specific term or keyword in your Schema, this will not get your page indexed in
Google. This confirmed Schema itself isn’t indexable, but we did see ranking results from the
made up term (mxjunxypmxh) used in the main heading and URL, which led us to our next test.

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