Data study · Niche schema types AI answers can read
Only 0.48% of Top-1M Sites Use Speakable Markup to Flag the Text Voice and AI Assistants Should Read Aloud
Speakable markup showed up on 3,732 of 772,412 top-1M sites (0.48%) in October 2026, on 5,350 crawled pages. The site count is up 15.7% since 2023, and 34.9% of the pages carry news markup.
Analysis of 1,377,729 pages from 772,412 top-1M sites · HTTP Archive, October 2026, with trend back to 2023
Key findings
- 1
3,732 of 772,412 top-1M sites (0.48%) had speakable markup on a crawled page in October 2026.
- 2
Only 0.3% of top-1M homepages (2,100) carry speakable markup.
- 3
The number of sites using it went from 3,225 in 2023 to 3,732 in 2026 (+15.7%), after dipping to 3,028 in 2025.
- 4
34.9% of speakable pages also carry news markup such as NewsArticle or NewsMediaOrganization; 63.6% attach speakable to a generic WebPage node.
- 5
65.0% of speakable pages point to content with CSS selectors and 54.1% with XPath; 6.6% declare speakable with neither.
- 6
Just 15 of the top 1,000 sites use it, against 3,004 sites ranked 100,001 to 1M.
Summary
Someone asks a smart speaker for the latest news about a local school board vote. The assistant needs a short passage it can read out loud. A publisher can mark which paragraph that should be. Almost nobody does.
Speakable is a schema.org property that points to the parts of a page best suited to text-to-speech, using CSS selectors or XPath. It was built for voice assistants and is still in beta for Google News publishers, but it is also a plain signal to any machine about which sentences sum up a page.
In October 2026 only 3,732 of 772,412 top-1M sites (0.48%) used it on a crawled page.
What we measured
We used four October crawls from HTTP Archive (2023 to 2026), mobile client, top-1M sites. HTTP Archive crawls each site's homepage plus one inner page; we counted both. For each page we parsed the rendered JSON-LD, flattened nested objects and @graph arrays, and flagged pages with a speakable property or a SpeakableSpecification node.
For 2026 we recorded which node type holds the speakable property, whether it uses cssSelector or xpath, whether the page also carries news markup, the site's rank bucket and the technologies detected on the page.
Adoption is flat and tiny
The number of sites barely moved from 2023 to 2025, then rose in 2026.
Count
| Crawl | Sites crawled | Homepages with speakable | Inner pages with speakable | Sites with speakable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2023 | 900,377 | 1,752 | 3,166 | 3,225 |
| Oct 2024 | 821,066 | 1,704 | 3,061 | 3,133 |
| Oct 2025 | 792,964 | 1,641 | 2,933 | 3,028 |
| Oct 2026 | 772,412 | 2,100 | 3,250 | 3,732 |
Source: aisearchoptimization.net analysis of 1,377,729 pages from 772,412 top-1M sites · HTTP Archive, October 2026, with trend back to 2023
Even after the 2026 rise, speakable sits on fewer than one site in two hundred.
News publishers are its clearest users
Where the property is attached tells you who is using it. Counts are pages; a page can hold speakable on more than one node.
Pages (N=5,350)
| Node type | Pages | Share % |
|---|---|---|
| WebPage | 3,404 | 63.6 |
| NewsArticle | 1,314 | 24.6 |
| Article | 262 | 4.9 |
| CollectionPage | 125 | 2.3 |
| FAQPage | 69 | 1.3 |
| WebSite | 47 | 0.9 |
| BlogPosting | 29 | 0.5 |
| MedicalWebPage | 20 | 0.4 |
Source: aisearchoptimization.net analysis of 1,377,729 pages from 772,412 top-1M sites · HTTP Archive, October 2026, with trend back to 2023
Business and service sites barely appear. That leaves an open field for any company that wants to mark the short answer on its key pages.
Big sites rarely bother either
Rank and platform breakdowns show where the few adopters sit.
| Group | Pages | Sites |
|---|---|---|
| Top 1,000 | 20 | 15 |
| 1,001 to 10,000 | 162 | 121 |
| 10,001 to 100,000 | 861 | 654 |
| 100,001 to 1M | 4,307 | 3,004 |
| React (technology) | 1,495 | 1,115 |
| Next.js (technology) | 740 | 590 |
| WordPress (technology) | 683 | 491 |
| AMP (technology) | 569 | 463 |
| Shopify (technology) | 139 | 99 |
| Drupal (technology) | 61 | 45 |
| Webflow (technology) | 11 | 8 |
Source: aisearchoptimization.net analysis of 1,377,729 pages from 772,412 top-1M sites · HTTP Archive, October 2026, with trend back to 2023
React appears on 1,495 speakable pages and Next.js on 740. Technology counts overlap.
What this means
Google documents speakable as a beta feature for news publishers and does not describe it as a ranking factor. Still, marking the one or two sentences that answer a page's main question costs little: add a speakable property with a cssSelector pointing to your summary paragraph. It also forces you to write that summary, which helps AI engines that quote short passages.
Whether or not you use speakable, make sure each key page opens with a clear, quotable answer. A free AI SEO audit will show which of your pages AI assistants already quote and which they skip.
Limits
HTTP Archive crawls one homepage and one inner page per site, so many article pages are not sampled and site counts understate adoption.
The top-1M site list changes between crawls.
We count JSON-LD only.
We do not check whether the selectors match real content on the page.
Embed this research
Add the charts from this study to your page. The embed links back here.
<iframe src="https://aisearchoptimization.net/embed/data-studies/speakable-markup-adoption" title="Fewer Than 1 in 200 Top Sites Use Speakable Markup" width="100%" height="720" style="border:0" loading="lazy"></iframe>
Cite this study
APA
Grenyo, K. (2026). Fewer Than 1 in 200 Top Sites Use Speakable Markup. AI Search Optimization. https://aisearchoptimization.net/resources/data-studies/speakable-markup-adoption
Plain link
Fewer Than 1 in 200 Top Sites Use Speakable Markup - AI Search Optimization - https://aisearchoptimization.net/resources/data-studies/speakable-markup-adoption
Frequently asked questions
What is speakable schema?
A schema.org property that marks the sections of a page best suited to be read aloud by voice assistants, using CSS selectors or XPath. It was designed for news content.
How many websites use speakable markup?
3,732 of 772,412 top-1M sites (0.48%) had speakable on a crawled page in October 2026, up from 3,225 sites in 2023.
Who uses speakable markup?
News publishers stand out. 34.9% of speakable pages also carry news markup, and NewsArticle is the second most common node type holding the property after WebPage.
Should a small business add speakable markup?
It is optional, and Google documents it as a beta feature for news content. Writing a short, clear answer at the top of key pages matters more; marking it with speakable is a small extra step.
Related studies
- Niche schema types AI answers can read1 in 68 JSON-LD Blocks on Top Sites Fails to Parse
- Niche schema types AI answers can readDataset Markup Grew 5.5x Since 2023, Gov and .edu Lag
- Niche schema types AI answers can readService Markup Spread to 5x More Top Sites Since 2023
- Niche schema types AI answers can read87.6% of Forum Pages Lack Discussion Markup
See where AI search leaves you out
Run the free AI visibility audit. If you want the fixes done for you, the plan is a flat $299/month.