WebSite Schema

TL;DR — WebSite schema is a small block of code you add to your homepage that tells search engines “this domain is a website, and here’s its name and address.” It used to power a search box that showed under some brands in Google’s results — but Google turned that feature off in November 2024. The schema itself isn’t dead, though: the name-and-URL part remains an input for Google’s site name feature. You don’t need to delete the old search-box code, but it no longer creates a Sitelinks Search Box in Google.

What WebSite schema is

When you land on a homepage, you can tell it’s “a website” with a name — say, Ahrefs — without thinking about it. A search engine sees plain text and has to work it out. WebSite schema spells it out in code, using the shared schema.org vocabulary: it tags your site’s name, an optional short alternateName (like an acronym), and your homepage url.

It’s almost always written as JSON-LD — a small script that sits in the page without changing how the page looks — and it belongs on your homepage only.

The feature that went away

For about ten years, WebSite schema could carry an extra piece called a SearchAction. That’s what powered Google’s Sitelinks Search Box — a little search field that sometimes appeared directly under a brand’s result, letting people search within that site straight from Google.

On November 21, 2024, Google removed that search box, saying usage had dropped. Two things are worth being clear about:

• You don’t need to remove the old code. Google says leftover markup like this won’t cause errors in Search Console. It just sits there, unused.
• This didn’t hurt rankings or “sitelinks.” The regular sitelinks — the clickable subpage links under a result — are a different thing and are unaffected.

What WebSite schema still does

Here’s the part most outdated guides miss: WebSite schema is not dead. The name-and-URL part now feeds Google’s Site Names feature — the bolded site name Google shows (instead of a plain web address) for homepage-level results, mostly on mobile. To express a preference, you give Google:

• name — what your site is called.
• url — your homepage address.
• alternateName (optional) — a short form or acronym.

Think of it as a suggestion, not a command: Google also looks at your title tag and other signals and makes the final call — the same way Organization schema doesn’t guarantee a Knowledge Panel.

Want the full version — the deprecation timeline, the exact properties, the homepage-only rule, and how WebSite differs from Organization schema? Switch to the Advanced tab.

TL;DR — schema.org/WebSite markup (usually JSON-LD, homepage only) historically did two jobs for Google: a potentialAction/SearchAction powered the Sitelinks Search Box, and name/url/alternateName express a Site Names preference. Google discontinued the Sitelinks Search Box starting Nov 21, 2024 (“usage has dropped”) — this does not affect rankings or ordinary sitelinks, and existing SearchAction markup doesn’t need to be removed (unsupported structured data won’t trigger Search Console errors). The critical distinction: the feature died, not the type. Google explicitly kept a variation of WebSite structured data alive for Site Names. Everything beyond name/url/alternateName (publisher, copyright fields) is valid schema.org vocabulary but isn’t tied to a documented Google Search feature.

What WebSite schema is (and isn’t)

schema.org/WebSite sits at Thing > CreativeWork > WebSite, and schema.org defines it in one line — “A WebSite is a set of related web pages and other items typically served from a single web domain and accessible via URLs.” Because it’s a CreativeWork subtype, it inherits a big property surface (publisher, copyrightHolder, copyrightYear, isPartOf, mainEntityOfPage, inLanguage, and the historical potentialAction). But Google only ever formally specified a handful of those for its two rich-result-adjacent features. Keep that framing straight and most WebSite-schema confusion evaporates: the type is broad, Google’s documented use of it is narrow.

A brief history: the Sitelinks Search Box

For over a decade, the thing WebSite schema was best known for was the Sitelinks Search Box — the in-SERP search field that occasionally showed under a brand’s result. You enabled it with a potentialAction of type SearchAction on the WebSite type:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "WebSite",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/",
  "potentialAction": {
    "@type": "SearchAction",
    "target": "https://query.example.com/search?q={search_term_string}",
    "query-input": "required name=search_term_string"
  }
}

Two details worth remembering. First, Google used its own shorthand — "query-input": "required name=search_term_string" — rather than schema.org’s generic EntryPoint/urlTemplate pattern, so this exact syntax is a Google-ism. Second, there used to be an opt-out: a nositelinkssearchbox robots meta tag for sites that didn’t want the box. When the feature was retired, Google archived that documentation too.

The Sitelinks Search Box deprecation (the news hook)

Google announced the end in a Search Central blog post, Farewell, Sitelinks Search Box (Oct 21, 2024, posted by John Mueller), with removal starting November 21, 2024. The stated reason was that usage had dropped and Google wanted to simplify the results. The concrete effects:

• Rankings and ordinary sitelinks are untouched. Only the in-SERP search input box went away — not the clickable subpage sitelinks, and nothing about ranking.
• You don’t have to remove your old markup. Google’s position is that removal is unnecessary and unsupported structured data won’t trigger Search Console errors.
• Tooling changed alongside it. Search Console’s Sitelinks Search Box rich-result report was removed, and the Rich Results Test stopped validating/highlighting the SearchAction markup for this feature.

The announcement came through the official blog and the Google Search Central X/Twitter account — I couldn’t find an individual Office Hours soundbite from Mueller, Illyes, or Splitt specifically about it, so I’m not going to invent one.

Do you need to remove your old markup? No.

Short answer: leave it. It’s inert, it causes no errors, and ripping it out earns you nothing. If you’re doing a schema audit and it bugs you to have dead code sitting there, you can remove the potentialAction/SearchAction block — but keep the surrounding WebSite object, because (see below) it still has a live job.

What WebSite schema still does today: Site Names

This is the myth I most want to kill: “the Sitelinks Search Box is gone, so WebSite schema is dead” is false. In the very same announcement, Google was explicit that a variation of WebSite structured data continues to be supported — for the Site Names feature. A site name is Google’s label for the site a page comes from (distinct from the per-page title link), shown for entire-site/homepage-level results, primarily on mobile.

Required and recommended properties

For expressing a site-name preference, the surface is tiny:

That’s it. No publisher, no copyright fields, no SearchAction — just name, url, and optionally alternateName.

Google’s own guidance is explicit that alternateName isn’t just a backup label: their system may pick one of your alternatives over your primary preference, for example when two globally-recognized sites would otherwise collide on the same name. Listing more than one, in order of preference, gives the automated system options — it doesn’t hand you control over which one gets used.

Placement: homepage / domain root only

Site Names markup goes on the home page only, at the domain or subdomain root — e.g. https://example.com/ or https://news.example.com/. A subdirectory-level “homepage” like https://example.com/news is not supported. This mirrors the same homepage-only placement rule the old SearchAction markup followed, so it’s a consistent pattern across WebSite markup generally: it lives at the root, once.

Google’s technical guidelines add a few scope details worth knowing before you implement:

• One name per site, where “site” means domain or subdomain. https://example.com, https://www.example.com, and https://m.example.com are all treated as the same domain-level site (Google generally considers www/m subdomains equivalent to the bare domain); https://news.example.com is its own, separate subdomain-level site. https://example.com/news — a subdirectory — isn’t a supported “site” for this feature at all.
• Duplicate homepages need consistent markup. If your homepage exists at more than one URL for the same content (HTTP vs. HTTPS, www vs. non-www), put the same WebSite structured data on every duplicate — not just the canonical one.
• Subdomains without their own markup can fall back to the domain-level name. If a subdomain’s home page has no WebSite structured data of its own, Google may use the domain-level site name for it instead.

How Google picks a site name without markup

Even with no markup, Google will pick a site name automatically, drawing on homepage signals — og:site_name, the <title>, heading elements, and how other sites reference you. So WebSite markup here is a preference signal, not a directive — exactly the “signal not guarantee” pattern you see with Organization schema and Knowledge Panels. Other documented limits: one site name per domain, not available for subdirectory-level sites, and it isn’t shown or tested in the Rich Results Test.

Feature boundaries: what’s connected to what

Between the retired search box and the live Site Names feature, it’s easy to blur several separate SERP elements together. They aren’t causally linked — supporting or removing one doesn’t affect the others:

Don’t read a relationship into this table that isn’t there: WebSite schema doesn’t feed title links or Knowledge Panels, and none of these features guarantee display just because markup is present and valid.

WebSite vs. Organization schema

These two get co-deployed on homepages all the time, and it’s worth being precise about the division of labor:

• WebSite describes the site-as-entity — the domain, its name, its URL. It feeds Site Names.
• Organization describes the business/publisher-as-entity — the company behind the site, its logo, social profiles, contact info. It feeds brand/Knowledge-Graph understanding.

The natural bridge between them is WebSite’s inherited publisher property, which can point at the Organization. If you’re implementing homepage schema, “add both” is the usual right answer — they’re complementary, not competing. (The Organization schema article on this site is the companion piece.)

Other WebSite / CreativeWork properties

Beyond name/url/alternateName (Site Names) and the now-inert potentialAction (Sitelinks Search Box), the rest of the WebSite/CreativeWork property surface — publisher, copyrightHolder, copyrightYear, copyrightNotice, isPartOf, mainEntityOfPage, inLanguage — is valid schema.org vocabulary but isn’t tied to a specifically documented Google Search feature the way name/url are. Include them if they help general entity understanding or your own tooling; don’t add them expecting a rich result. No dedicated Google Search Central page ties WebSite’s copyright/publisher fields to a named feature, so I won’t overstate their search value.

Bing and other engines

Bing supports the schema.org vocabulary broadly (JSON-LD, Microdata, RDFa, Microformats) and validates typed data, but I found no dedicated Bing documentation describing a Bing-specific Sitelinks-Search-Box equivalent or a Bing “Site Names” analog tied to WebSite markup. So schema.org/WebSite is valid, generically-supported markup on Bing — there’s just no bespoke Bing feature to target with it. I’d call that a genuine documentation gap rather than implying Bing quietly matched Google.

Where this sits in the bigger picture

WebSite is one type in the wider structured data / schema markup world, and on a homepage it’s a natural pair with Organization schema. If you’re auditing legacy schema, the practical takeaway is simple: keep the WebSite object for Site Names, stop worrying about the dead SearchAction, and don’t confuse “the search box is gone” with “the schema is gone.”

AI summary

A condensed take on the Advanced version:

• What it is: schema.org/WebSite markup (usually JSON-LD, homepage only) identifying your domain as a website entity — name, url, optional alternateName. Type hierarchy: Thing > CreativeWork > WebSite.
• Historically did two jobs for Google: (1) a potentialAction/SearchAction powered the Sitelinks Search Box; (2) name/url/alternateName express a Site Names preference.
• The deprecation: Google discontinued the Sitelinks Search Box starting November 21, 2024 (announced Oct 21, 2024 by John Mueller), citing dropped usage. It does not affect rankings or ordinary sitelinks.
• Old markup: doesn’t need to be removed — it’s inert, and Google says unsupported structured data won’t trigger Search Console errors. Search Console’s rich-result report and the Rich Results Test check for it were removed.
• The key myth to kill: the feature died, not the type. Google explicitly kept a variation of WebSite structured data alive for Site Names. Don’t conflate “SearchAction is dead” with “WebSite schema is dead.”
• Site Names spec: name + url required, alternateName recommended; homepage/ domain-root only (subdirectory “homepages” unsupported). It’s a preference signal, not a guarantee — Google also uses og:site_name, <title>, headings, and external references, and picks a name even without markup. Multiple alternateName values are allowed, in preference order — Google may pick one over your primary if there’s a name collision with another global site.
• Scope details: one site name per domain/subdomain (www/m subdomains count as the same site as the bare domain); duplicate homepage URLs (HTTP/HTTPS, www/non-www) need identical markup; a subdomain with no markup of its own can fall back to the domain-level name.
• Feature boundaries: Sitelinks Search Box, Site Names, ordinary sitelinks, title links, and Knowledge Panels are five separate things. Only Site Names is tied to WebSite schema; none of the others are, and none are guaranteed by markup.
• WebSite vs Organization: WebSite = site-as-entity (feeds Site Names); Organization = business-as-entity (feeds brand/Knowledge Graph). The publisher property bridges them; “add both” on the homepage is usual.
• Everything else (publisher, copyrightHolder, copyrightYear, isPartOf, inLanguage) is valid vocabulary but not tied to a documented Google Search feature.
• Bing: supports schema.org generically; no documented Site-Names or Sitelinks-Search- Box equivalent.

Official documentation

Primary-source documentation from Google, the spec, and Bing.

Google — the deprecation and the live feature

• Farewell, Sitelinks Search Box (Search Central Blog, Oct 21, 2024) — the deprecation announcement: Nov 21, 2024 removal, “usage has dropped,” no ranking impact, no need to remove markup.
• Site Names in Google Search — the live use case for WebSite schema: name/url/alternateName, the homepage-only rule, and how Google auto-selects a site name.
• General Structured Data Guidelines — the spam-policy backbone and the “no guarantee of display” position.

Spec — schema.org

• schema.org/WebSite — the type definition, hierarchy (Thing > CreativeWork > WebSite), and full property list.
• schema.org/SearchAction — the historical potentialAction target used for the Sitelinks Search Box (verify property names before reusing).

Bing / Microsoft

• Marking up your site with structured data — Bing’s general schema.org/JSON-LD support (no WebSite-specific feature documented).

Quotes from the source

On-the-record statements from Google. Read the caveat below before treating these as pinpoint-verbatim — the underlying blog/docs pages resisted automated verification.

Google Search Central Blog — Farewell, Sitelinks Search Box

• “It’s been over ten years since we initially announced the sitelinks search box in Google Search, and over time, we’ve noticed that usage has dropped. With that, and to help simplify the search results, we’ll be removing this visual element starting on November 21, 2024.” Jump to quote
• “This change will apply globally across all search results, in all languages and countries. This doesn’t affect rankings or the other sitelinks visual element, and won’t be listed in the Search status dashboard.” Jump to quote
• On unsupported markup after removal: “Unsupported structured data like this won’t cause issues in Search, and won’t trigger errors in Search Console reports.” Jump to quote

Google Search Central — official X/Twitter account (same announcement, restated)

• “We’re saying bye to the sitelinks search box in Google Search results starting Nov 21, 2024, as usage has dropped. This doesn’t affect rankings or other sitelinks. The corresponding markup doesn’t need to be removed, but won’t be used by Google.” Read the post

schema.org — the WebSite type (independently verified against the live page)

• “A WebSite is a set of related web pages and other items typically served from a single web domain and accessible via URLs.” Jump to quote

Should I add — or keep — WebSite / SearchAction markup?

The confusion after the November 2024 change splits into two clean questions: is the old search-box code worth adding or keeping (no — that feature is dead), and should you add WebSite schema for Site Names (yes, if you want the feature). Work down the tree.

WebSite schema cheat sheet

The two lifecycles at a glance

Site Names — required vs. recommended

Placement rule

• Homepage only, at the domain or subdomain root (https://example.com/, https://news.example.com/).
• Subdirectory “homepages” (https://example.com/news) are not supported.
• One site name per domain/subdomain — www and m subdomains count as the same domain-level site.
• Duplicate homepage URLs (HTTP/HTTPS, www/non-www) need matching markup on every copy.
• A subdomain with no markup of its own can fall back to the domain-level name.

Feature boundaries (not causally linked)

• Sitelinks Search Box (retired) ≠ Site Names (live) ≠ ordinary sitelinks (live, unaffected) ≠ title links (per-page headline, unaffected) ≠ Knowledge Panel (separate entity signal).
• Only Site Names is tied to WebSite schema.

Deprecation fast facts

• Announced Oct 21, 2024 (John Mueller, Search Central Blog); removal Nov 21, 2024.
• Reason: “usage has dropped.”
• No effect on rankings or ordinary sitelinks.
• Old SearchAction markup: no need to remove; won’t trigger Search Console errors.
• Search Console rich-result report and Rich Results Test check for it were removed.
• The old nositelinkssearchbox opt-out meta tag is now moot (documentation archived).

Framing to keep straight

• name/url/alternateName = live (Site Names).
• potentialAction/SearchAction = inert (dead feature).
• publisher, copyright*, isPartOf, inLanguage = valid vocabulary, no documented Google feature.
• Site name markup is a signal, not a directive.
• WebSite ≠ dead. Only the search box died.

WebSite JSON-LD — current vs. historical

Current: Site Names markup (what to use today)

Homepage only. name + url required, alternateName recommended:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "WebSite",
  "name": "Example Analytics",
  "alternateName": "ExAn",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/"
}

You can supply multiple alternate names in order of preference:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "WebSite",
  "name": "Example Analytics",
  "alternateName": ["ExAn", "Example"],
  "url": "https://www.example.com/"
}

WebSite + Organization together (the common homepage pattern)

WebSite describes the site-as-entity; Organization describes the business behind it; the publisher property bridges them:

[
  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "WebSite",
    "name": "Example Analytics",
    "alternateName": "ExAn",
    "url": "https://www.example.com/",
    "publisher": { "@id": "https://www.example.com/#org" }
  },
  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "Organization",
    "@id": "https://www.example.com/#org",
    "name": "Example Analytics, Inc.",
    "url": "https://www.example.com/",
    "logo": "https://www.example.com/logo.png"
  }
]

Historical: the old Sitelinks Search Box (no longer functional)

This is what a legacy SearchAction implementation looked like. It no longer produces an in-SERP search box — Google discontinued the feature on Nov 21, 2024. Shown only so you can recognize it in existing markup; you don’t need to remove it, and you shouldn’t add it to a new site expecting the search box:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "WebSite",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/",
  "potentialAction": {
    "@type": "SearchAction",
    "target": "https://query.example.com/search?q={search_term_string}",
    "query-input": "required name=search_term_string"
  }
}

Note the Google-specific shorthand "query-input": "required name=search_term_string" rather than schema.org’s generic EntryPoint/urlTemplate pattern — a Google-ism from when the feature was live.

Test yourself: WebSite Schema

Five quick questions on schema.org/WebSite, the Sitelinks Search Box deprecation, and the Site Names feature. Pick an answer for each, then check.

Resources worth your time

My writing on this topic

I haven’t published a standalone WebSite schema guide of my own, so rather than point you at something that doesn’t exist, the honest move is to send you to the primary sources below and to the related structured-data work on this site. For the broader vocabulary and where WebSite fits, see the Schema Markup and Structured Data hubs; for the natural homepage companion, the Organization schema article (site-as-entity vs. business-as-entity).

From around the industry

• Farewell, Sitelinks Search Box (Google Search Central Blog) — the deprecation announcement: dates, “usage has dropped,” no ranking impact, no need to remove markup.
• Site Names in Google Search (Google) — the live WebSite-schema use case: name/url/alternateName, homepage-only placement, and automated site-name selection.
• schema.org/WebSite — the spec: type definition, hierarchy, and the full property list.
• Google Search to drop Sitelinks Search Box (Search Engine Land) — coverage confirming the Nov 21, 2024 date and no-ranking-impact framing.
• Google Removes Sitelinks Search Box Documentation (Search Engine Journal) — notes the archived docs and the retired nositelinkssearchbox opt-out meta tag.
• Google Sitelinks Search Box Going Away November 21 (Search Engine Roundtable) — corroborates the date, reasoning, and the Search Console / Rich Results Test tooling removals.
• Marking up your site with structured data (Bing Webmaster Tools) — Bing’s general schema.org/JSON-LD support (no WebSite-specific feature).

WebSite Schema

WebSite schema (schema.org/WebSite) is structured data — usually JSON-LD on the homepage — that identifies your domain as a website entity via its name and URL. Today it mainly feeds Google's Site Names feature; the Sitelinks Search Box it used to enable was discontinued by Google in November 2024.

Related: Schema Markup, Structured Data, Organization Schema, Rich Results

WebSite Schema

WebSite schema is the schema.org/WebSite structured-data vocabulary you add to your homepage — usually as JSON-LD — to identify your domain as a website entity: its name, alternateName, and url. Its type hierarchy is Thing > CreativeWork > WebSite, so it inherits CreativeWork properties like publisher, copyrightHolder, and the historical potentialAction hook.

For over a decade, a potentialAction/SearchAction on the WebSite type powered Google’s Sitelinks Search Box — the search field that sometimes appeared under a brand’s result. Google discontinued that visual element starting November 21, 2024, citing dropped usage. It does not affect rankings or ordinary sitelinks, and existing SearchAction markup doesn’t need to be removed — it’s simply inert now.

Crucially, the WebSite type itself was not deprecated. Google explicitly said a variation of WebSite structured data “continues to be supported” for its Site Names feature — the bolded site name shown instead of a URL on homepage-level results, mainly on mobile. Site Names requires name and url, recommends alternateName, and must be placed on the homepage only. WebSite and Organization schema are complementary and commonly co-deployed: WebSite describes the site-as-entity, Organization describes the business behind it.

Related: Schema Markup, Structured Data, Organization Schema, Rich Results

Changelog