Structured Data is Critical for Dealers To Get Into AI Search Results

[DjSec]

Just yesterday, Google Chrome released an early preview of WebMCP, which is a proposed web standard that would allow a website to expose structured tools directly to in-browser agents. So instead of an agent having to screen scrape and guess its way through a UI, it can call real functions with defined schemas.

Making your site MCP-compatible for AI agents is a little different than just wanting to show up in AI search results, but having structured data and clearly defined actions on your site certainly can’t hurt.

I agree structured data and clearly defined schemas are good practice. That’s not controversial. Web standards that make machine interaction easier will likely become more important over time.

Where I take issue is with the leap from “good practice” to “primary AI growth driver” and claims that 380 dealerships saw substantial AI traffic spikes after migration.

Structured data:

• Is not a direct ranking factor.
• Does not trigger indexing.
• Does not guarantee AI Overview inclusion.
• Does not override authority or competitive positioning.

It helps search engines interpret content. That’s valuable. But it is a refinement signal not a traffic lever.

If 380 dealerships saw substantial growth after migration, the obvious variables would be:

• Improved technical SEO
• Better crawl efficiency
• Faster site speed
• Cleaner architecture
• Stronger internal linking
• Inventory freshness handling

Those changes move traffic.

Attributing that lift specifically to schema or “AI readiness” requires isolating schema as the variable, which would require controlled before/after testing and a defined AI visibility metric.

What tool is being used to measure “AI visibility” across 380 accounts? AI Overview citations? Referral logs from AI agents? Impression deltas? Something else?

If schema alone caused large traffic spikes, we would expect to see low-authority but perfectly tagged sites outperforming strong brands without it. That’s not what’s happening in real-world SERPs or AI Overviews.

Structured data is smart.
Overstating its impact is not.

 

[craigh]

Structured data is smart.
Overstating its impact is not.

This conversation is going all over the map and it feels like an argument that can't have a winner.

Should you add schema markup to your website? Yes. Irrefutably yes.
Will it be a magic carpet that takes you to the #1 spot? No.
Is it a detriment to not have schema markup? Yes. (AI is not everything)

That's all that dealers need to know IMHO.

 

[SavvyNick]

Hey Matt, I'm reaching out to our team for clarification. I'll reach out with their response.

Hey Matt our team updated our tool to properly detect KGI Dealer Solutions as a provider. Go ahead and re-run your analysis, and feel free to reach out to us directly with any questions about your results.

 

[DjSec]

This conversation is going all over the map and it feels like an argument that can't have a winner.

Should you add schema markup to your website? Yes. Irrefutably yes.
Will it be a magic carpet that takes you to the #1 spot? No.
Is it a detriment to not have schema markup? Yes. (AI is not everything)

That's all that dealers need to know IMHO.

When someone comes into the forum, dropping links to their site every time they post and being very misleading in what they are saying, IMHO it needs to be called out, otherwise the forum just ends up being a place for spammers giving misleading information to try and sell their products.

 

[douglaskarr]

This conversation is going all over the map and it feels like an argument that can't have a winner.

Should you add schema markup to your website? Yes. Irrefutably yes.
Will it be a magic carpet that takes you to the #1 spot? No.
Is it a detriment to not have schema markup? Yes. (AI is not everything)

That's all that dealers need to know IMHO.

I agree 100%. Thanks for summarizing more concisely!