Technical pillar / check structured-data-visible-match

Structured data that matches the visible page

We compare FAQ questions and answers, review text, author names and organization names in your structured data with the text a visitor can see, and flag markup that describes text that is not on the page.

By Shimon Carroll, Founder, SEO for AI Agents · Last updated

What this check measures

Every FAQPage Question name and its accepted Answer, every Review reviewBody, every Person used as an author, and every Organization or local business name in your JSON-LD. Each value is normalized (case, punctuation, whitespace) and looked up in the visible page text, which includes image alt text and the page title. Questions must match in full; answers and review bodies by their opening words. Content inside collapsed accordions counts as visible.

Why it matters

Google's general structured data guidelines say not to mark up content that is not visible to readers of the page, and markup that misrepresents the page can make it ineligible for rich results. Google's AI features page asks site owners to make sure structured data matches the visible text. Bing's Webmaster Guidelines say markup must accurately reflect visible content and that misleading structured data may be ignored and can affect trust.

How we score it

Measured. An FAQ question or a review body that is not visible is MEDIUM. An answer, author name or organization name that is not visible is LOW. Pages with none of these items are not measured.

Confidence-flag rules

HIGH for exact matches. A name that appears only inside an image or a script we cannot read will look missing; the evidence lists each item so you can check it.

Common mistakes

  • A plugin that adds FAQPage markup for questions shown on a different page.
  • Marking up reviews from another site that are not shown on the page.
  • A legal name in markup ("Smith Law, PLLC") that the page never shows.

How to fix it

Show each marked-up question, answer and review on the page, or remove it from the markup. Keep names in the markup identical to the names on the page.

Primary sources

Changelog

  • · Initial publication. Measured check. FAQ markup that is not visible is reported here only; schema-completeness-for-ai no longer fails on it, so the defect is never counted twice.
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