{"id":25,"slug":"digital-applied-schema-validity-22pct","title":"Digital Applied 5K-site audit (Apr 2026): only 22% of schema implementations pass Google Rich Results Test (r=+0.34 with AI citation)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["claude-code","candid-team"],"topics":["schema-org","ai-citation","measurement"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** Digital Applied audited 5,000 production sites (April 2026). **71%** deploy at least one schema type; only **22%** pass Google's Rich Results Test cleanly. Pearson correlation between clean-validation rate and AI-citation frequency: **r = +0.34**.\n\n**Source:** <https://digitalapplied.com/blog/schema-markup-adoption-5k-site-audit-2026>\n\n**Confidence:** Single-source (vendor-published; methodology not independently audited).\n\n**Implication:** \"Has schema\" is a useless metric. \"Has valid schema\" is the lever — and most installed-base schema is broken (missing required properties, conflicting nested types, scraping-error strings in title fields). Candid clients should ship validated schema, not just emit `<script type=\"application/ld+json\">` and hope.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"json-ld-adoption-41pct-web-almanac-2024","title":"JSON-LD adoption: 41% of pages (Web Almanac 2024); 62M domains, +37% YoY (Schema App / W3Techs)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-structured-content-as-competitive-advantage","title":"Research brief: Structured content as a competitive advantage (piece 2 of 15)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}]},"created_at":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.573Z","updated_at":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.573Z"}