Recipe Schema and AI Search: Get Your Recipes Credited

A reader asks Google's AI Mode or ChatGPT for a weeknight curry, and your recipe is one of the sources. What comes back can be your recipe exactly, with your name and a link to you. Or it can be a version with a line missing, the wrong cook time, and nobody's name on it. Most of that difference is decided on your own page, long before anyone asks.

It matters more than it used to. On searches where an AI Overview appears, Seer Interactive measured organic click-through falling from 1.76% to 0.61%. The clicks that are left, and the name on the answer, carry more weight than they did.

Nobody can promise your recipe a place in an AI answer, and anyone who does is selling something. What you can do is make sure that when your recipe is used, it comes out right and credited to you. Four steps, most of them a few minutes each.

First, what Google says it takes

Google is unusually direct about AI Overviews and AI Mode. Its guidance says there are "no additional requirements" to appear in them, and "no special schema.org structured data that you need to add." To be shown as a link, a page has to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet. That is all.

So the steps below are not a trick for getting picked. They are what decides how your recipe reads, and whose name is on it, when it does get picked.

Step 1: Let AI search open the page

For many food blogs this is the whole problem, and it has nothing to do with the recipe. Some hosts and security services block AI crawlers by default, in a file called robots.txt that most people never look at.

Blocking AI training is a fair choice. Blocking the crawler that answers your readers' questions is a different one, and plenty of sites made it without knowing. A page an assistant cannot open is a page it can only describe from somewhere else, usually without your name.

Two things to check:

Your robots.txt. It is at yoursite.com/robots.txt. Look for the crawlers of the assistants your readers use (Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User for ChatGPT, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User for Claude, PerplexityBot) under a Disallow line. Our free checker reads it for you.
No `nosnippet` on recipe posts. Google uses snippet controls to decide what it may show from a page, in AI Overviews and AI Mode too. A recipe post marked nosnippet has asked to be left out.

Step 2: Give the recipe a hidden recipe card

The recipe card your readers see is for people. Software reads a second card, hidden in the page's code, called recipe schema. It is a small block of structured data, usually in a format called JSON-LD, that spells out:

that the page is a Recipe
the name and the photo
the ingredients, each as its own line
the steps, in order
the prep time, cook time and yield
the author

When it is missing, anything that wants your recipe has to pick it out of the surrounding text, and that guessing is how a cook time comes back wrong, an ingredient goes missing, or your name falls off on the way.

AI search is already showing what is on that card. On March 4, 2026, Google made dishes in AI Mode tappable, with links to the recipe sites behind them. On July 1 it added a layout that puts recipe links near the top of the answer, each showing details such as the creator's name, ratings and ingredient count: the author, the rating and the ingredient list, the facts a recipe card states outright. Google has also said it plans to bring cook time to more recipe results. And when ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity open a recipe link, a complete card hands them the exact recipe instead of leaving them to find it in a long post.

The same card does the long-standing job in regular Google too: a page without it can rank as a page, but it cannot show up as a recipe, with its photo, cook time and stars.

You almost never write it by hand. Recipe card plugins such as WP Recipe Maker, Tasty Recipes and Create by Mediavine write it from the fields you fill in.

Step 3: Check it in 30 seconds

Open Google's Rich Results Test.
Paste the link to one recipe post (not your homepage or a category page).
Run the test.
Look for Recipes in the list of detected items.

If Recipes is not there, the page has no recipe card that Google can read. If it is there but marked invalid, the error names the missing required field, the name or the image. If it is there with warnings, open it and read them. They name the exact field that is missing.

Without the tool: open the page, view the source, and search for "Recipe" with the quotation marks. If it is nowhere in the HTML, the page almost certainly has no recipe data. If the two checks disagree, trust the Rich Results Test.

Check more than one post. Test a recent recipe and an old one. Sites that changed plugins or themes years ago often have recipe data on new posts and none on the posts that were migrated across.

What to fill in

Google requires only two fields: the recipe's name and an image (it recommends several high-resolution crops, 16:9, 4:3 and 1:1, so the photo fits every layout). Everything else is recommended, and the recommended fields are where most of the value is:

author: who wrote the recipe, ideally with a link to you.
recipeIngredient: each ingredient as its own item.
recipeInstructions: the steps, each as its own item, not one paragraph.
prepTime, cookTime, totalTime: durations in a fixed format, so 30 minutes is written PT30M. Google asks for prep and cook time together, or a total time on its own.
recipeYield: servings.
aggregateRating: your star rating, with both the average and the number of ratings. Without both, there are no stars to show, and even with them Google decides when to display them.

The three usual reasons it is missing

1. No recipe card on the post. The ingredients were typed as an ordinary bullet list in the editor. It looks fine in the browser and carries no recipe data at all. Common on posts written before a recipe plugin was installed.

2. The card is there, but the recipe is not in it. Recipe plugins only write what you enter in their own fields. Ingredients or steps typed in the post body underneath the card do not count.

3. Something removed it. A theme change, a page builder, or an optimization plugin that rewrites the scripts on a page can drop or break the block. If a post passed before and fails after an update, look at what changed.

To fix them: move every ingredient and step into the plugin's recipe card, fill in the times and servings, save, and test again. No plugin yet? The free versions of WP Recipe Maker and Create both write recipe schema; start with your most-visited recipes. On Squarespace, Wix, Ghost or a custom site, look up "recipe schema" in your site builder's help pages, and let the Rich Results Test judge whether the fix worked.

Step 4: Put your name on it, the same way everywhere

The author field is how your name travels with the recipe. Two things make it work:

A person's name, not just the site's. A name like "Jamie Rivera" can be credited. "admin" cannot. If the plugin fills the author from your WordPress account, check what that account's public name is.
One spelling, everywhere. The same name on the recipe card, the byline, your About page and your social profiles. A name that changes from page to page is harder to connect to you.

Then make sure the card matches the page. Google lists structured data that matches the visible text among the basics for its AI features. A card that says 20 minutes on a page that says 45 is a mixed signal everywhere it is read.

What this does not do

It does not guarantee a citation, a rich result or a click. A recipe can be repeated exactly, with your name on it, and the reader can still cook it without visiting. Right and credited is the floor, not the whole house.

It does not replace good photography, clear writing, or a page that loads quickly on a phone. And it does not describe your photos: recipe schema labels the recipe, alt text labels each image. You want both.

A faster check

Paste one recipe link into our free recipe schema and AI visibility checker. It answers in a few seconds with no sign-up: whether your robots.txt lets the AI assistants your readers use open the page, whether the recipe data meets Google's guidelines field by field, and whether your name travels with the recipe as its author.

Peristyle sites write complete recipe schema on every recipe from the fields you fill in, with your name as the author. If your current site already passes, keep it. This post is the check, not a reason to move.

FAQ

How do I get my recipes into AI search answers?

No one can guarantee it. Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode have no special requirements beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet. What you control is whether AI search can open your page (your robots.txt), whether it finds the exact recipe there (complete recipe schema), and whether your name comes with it (the author field).

Does recipe schema help my recipes appear in AI Overviews?

Not directly. Google says no special structured data is needed for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Recipe schema still earns the recipe result in regular search, keeps the cook time and author stated rather than guessed, and hands assistants such as ChatGPT the exact recipe when they open the page.

What is recipe schema?

A hidden block of structured data, usually JSON-LD, that describes a recipe using the schema.org Recipe type: its name, photo, ingredients, steps, times, servings, rating and author. Recipe card plugins write it for you from the fields you fill in.

How do I know if my recipe has it?

Paste the recipe's link into Google's Rich Results Test and look for Recipes among the detected items. Or view the page source and search for "Recipe" with the quotation marks. Test an old post as well as a new one.

Should I block AI crawlers?

That is your call, and it is two separate questions. OpenAI and Anthropic each run one crawler for training (GPTBot, ClaudeBot) and others for search and for fetching a page when a reader asks. By their own descriptions, blocking the training crawler does not keep you out of their search answers. Blocking the search and fetch crawlers does, and the answer is then built without your page, and usually without your name.

How to make sure AI search gets your recipe right, and credits you