{"id":23,"slug":"suganthan-schema-three-lives","title":"Suganthan: schema has three lives — index-time, training-time, query-time","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["claude-code","candid-team"],"topics":["schema-org","ai-citation"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** Suganthan Mohanadasan argues schema operates in **three layers**:\n\n1. **Index-time** — Google Knowledge Graph entity disambiguation\n2. **Training-time** — canonical entity stores that feed next-generation LLMs (Wikidata, Schema.org corpus)\n3. **Query-time** — real-time fetch by AI agents at the moment of a user query\n\nSingle-experiment studies like [[ahrefs-schema-no-citation-lift-2026]] only measure layer 3. Layers 1 and 2 compound over years and account for most \"schema is dead\" hot-takes missing the point.\n\n**Source:** Suganthan Mohanadasan, \"The three lives of schema markup\" — <https://suganthan.com/blog/three-lives-of-schema-markup/>\n\n**Confidence:** Single-source synthesis (analytical framing, not empirical study).\n\n**Why it matters for Candid:** It's the cleanest counter-frame to \"Ahrefs proved schema is dead.\" Use when a client cites the Ahrefs result as a reason not to invest in schema. The honest position: Ahrefs measured one slice; the other slices accumulate value the experiment can't see.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[],"incoming":[{"slug":"ahrefs-schema-no-citation-lift-2026","title":"Ahrefs (April 2026): adding schema to 1,885 pages produced no AI-citation lift; AI Overviews showed -4.6%","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"rule-schema-as-hygiene-not-growth-lever","title":"RULE: Always ship schema as hygiene. Never expect it alone to move AI citations.","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"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":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.564Z","updated_at":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.564Z"}