Toronto SEO
All schema types
Navigation & Site Structure
schema.org spec

SearchAction (potentialAction)

Declares an internal site search endpoint. Historically powered the Google sitelinks search box (deprecated October 2024).

What it is

SearchAction declares your internal search endpoint, nested inside a WebSite entity on the homepage. Google deprecated the sitelinks search box rich result in October 2024, so this markup no longer surfaces a SERP-level search field. It remains valuable as a structured signal for LLMs (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews) describing where users can search your site, and is still part of best-practice WebSite markup.

Required properties
  • target
  • query-input
Recommended properties

None — required properties are sufficient.

JSON-LD example
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "WebSite",
  "url": "https://example.com",
  "potentialAction": {
    "@type": "SearchAction",
    "target": {
      "@type": "EntryPoint",
      "urlTemplate": "https://example.com/search?q={search_term_string}"
    },
    "query-input": "required name=search_term_string"
  }
}
</script>
Google rich result support

Sitelinks search box rich result was deprecated October 2024. Markup remains useful for AI/LLM ingestion and general semantic clarity.

When to use it
  • Homepages of sites with internal search
  • AEO/LLM ingestion signals