ClaimReview Schema

Fact Check rich result if eligible

Eligibility gate: authoritative publisher status, corrections policy, one ClaimReview per page

Implementation: a working JSON-LD example

Here's a minimal but complete ClaimReview block covering both required and recommended properties, structured the way Google expects it:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "ClaimReview",
  "url": "https://example-factcheck.org/claim-xyz",
  "claimReviewed": "A new law bans home vegetable gardens nationwide",
  "itemReviewed": {
    "@type": "Claim",
    "author": {
      "@type": "Organization",
      "name": "Example Viral Post Source"
    },
    "datePublished": "2026-05-14",
    "appearance": [
      "https://example.com/social-post-123"
    ]
  },
  "author": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Example Fact Check Org",
    "url": "https://example-factcheck.org"
  },
  "datePublished": "2026-05-20",
  "reviewRating": {
    "@type": "Rating",
    "ratingValue": "1",
    "bestRating": "5",
    "worstRating": "1",
    "alternateName": "False"
  }
}

Implementation steps, in order:

1. Confirm your site actually meets Google's fact-check publisher eligibility before investing time, an ineligible site with perfect markup still won't get the rich result.
2. Draft the claim text for claimReviewed as a neutral, verdict-free summary under roughly 75 characters.
3. Fill in itemReviewed.author with who actually made the claim, not your organization.
4. Set your rating scale once, document it internally (1-5, 1-10, whatever), and reuse it consistently across every fact-check page on the site.
5. Add your organization as author on the ClaimReview object with a working url so Google can verify who you are.
6. Place exactly one ClaimReview object per page, if you're reviewing multiple claims, that's multiple pages, not multiple ClaimReview blocks stacked on one URL.
7. Make sure the visible page text says the same verdict the schema says. If the article body hedges or later text contradicts the rating, fix the copy or fix the schema so they agree.
8. Validate before publishing and periodically after, since template changes can silently break nested properties.

How to detect and validate it

Run the page through Google's Rich Results Test first: it flags missing required properties and tells you directly if the page is eligible for the Fact Check result type. Follow with Schema.org's Structured Data validator for a broader syntax check that isn't Google-result-specific, useful for catching malformed JSON-LD Google's tool might silently ignore. If you're auditing ClaimReview across many URLs at once, Screaming Frog's custom JSON-LD extraction (XPath or regex on the script tag) lets you pull claimReviewed, reviewRating.alternateName, and author.name into a spreadsheet so you can eyeball rating-scale consistency across the whole fact-check archive in one pass. Once live and indexed, Search Console's Enhancements report shows a Fact Check section with valid, invalid, and warning counts over time, your ongoing monitoring layer, not just a one-time check.

Common mistakes

The most frequent failure isn't a missing property, it's using this schema at all when the site isn't an eligible fact-check publisher. Second: putting the verdict inside claimReviewed instead of reviewRating, which muddies the claim summary and can look like editorializing. Third: missing or incomplete itemReviewed.author, Google wants to know who originated the claim, not just who's fact-checking it, and leaving that blank weakens the whole record. Fourth: inconsistent or backwards rating scales, if bestRating means 5 on one page and 5 means false on another page of the same site, that's an internal contradiction, and if the scale direction is reversed relative to Google's spec, the rich result can show the opposite of your actual verdict. Fifth: stacking more than one ClaimReview per page, which per Google's guidance disqualifies the page from the single fact check rich result entirely.

What good looks like

A well-run ClaimReview implementation reads like a court record: neutral claim statement, clear attribution of who said it and where, a documented rating scale, a named and verifiable fact-checking organization, and page copy that says exactly what the schema says. Sites that show up reliably in Google's Fact Check Explorer tend to publish fact checks as a core editorial product with a visible methodology page, not an occasional side feature. If that's not your site, skip ClaimReview and let your content speak plainly instead of dressing it up in schema it doesn't qualify to use.

FAQ