Education Q&A (Quiz, Question, and Answer) structured data

If you have flashcard pages, you can help students better find answers to educational questions by adding Quiz structured data to your flashcard pages. Adding structured data makes your content eligible to appear in the Q&A carousel in Google Search results, Google Assistant, and Google Lens results.

Example of an education Q&A rich result

The following page types are eligible for the education Q&A carousel:

  • Flashcard page: A page that contains flashcards that typically have a question on one side and an answer on the other side. To mark up flashcard pages, continue reading this guide to learn how to add education Q&A schema.
  • Single Q&A page: A page that only contains one question and is followed by user-submitted answers. To mark up single Q&A pages, add QAPage markup instead.

Feature availability

The education Q&A carousel is available in English in all regions where Google Search is available. The feature is only available when searching for education-related topics on desktop and mobile. For example, try searching for queries like "the measure of three angles of a quadrilateral are 80 90 and 103 degrees" or "the ratio of surface energy to surface area is".

How to add structured data

Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content. If you're new to structured data, you can learn more about how structured data works.

Here's an overview of how to build, test, and release structured data.

  1. Add the required properties. Based on the format you're using, learn where to insert structured data on the page.
  2. Follow the guidelines.
  3. Validate your code using the Rich Results Test and fix any critical errors. Consider also fixing any non-critical issues that may be flagged in the tool, as they can help improve the quality of your structured data (however, this isn't necessary to be eligible for rich results).
  4. Deploy a few pages that include your structured data and use the URL Inspection tool to test how Google sees the page. Be sure that your page is accessible to Google and not blocked by a robots.txt file, the noindex tag, or login requirements. If the page looks okay, you can ask Google to recrawl your URLs.
  5. To keep Google informed of future changes, we recommend that you submit a sitemap. You can automate this with the Search Console Sitemap API.

Examples

Here's an example of a flashcard page with education Q&A structured data. 


<html>
  <head>
    <title>Cell Transport</title>
    <script type="application/ld+json">
    {
      "@context": "https://schema.org/",
      "@type": "Quiz",
      "about": {
        "@type": "Thing",
        "name": "Cell Transport"
      },
      "educationalAlignment": [
        {
          "@type": "AlignmentObject",
          "alignmentType": "educationalSubject",
          "targetName": "Biology"
        }
      ],
      "hasPart": [
        {
          "@context": "https://schema.org/",
          "@type": "Question",
          "eduQuestionType": "Flashcard",
          "text": "This is some fact about receptor molecules.",
          "acceptedAnswer": {
            "@type": "Answer",
            "text": "receptor molecules"
          }
        },
        {
          "@context": "https://schema.org/",
          "@type": "Question",
          "eduQuestionType": "Flashcard",
          "text": "This is some fact about the cell membrane.",
          "acceptedAnswer": {
            "@type": "Answer",
            "text": "cell membrane"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
    </script>
  </head>
</html>

Guidelines

For your page to be eligible for the education Q&A rich result, you must follow these guidelines:

Technical guidelines

  • Put structured data on the most detailed leaf page possible. Don't add structured data to pages without questions.
  • All questions must use the Flashcard value for the eduQuestionType property. Pages that contain other question types are not eligible for the education Q&A carousel. For pages with other question types, consider using Practice Problems.
  • Ensure that Googlebot can crawl your site efficiently.
  • The questions on your site should be immediately visible to users on the page, meaning that the questions aren't held only in a data file or PDF.
  • If your page has only one question followed by several user-submitted answers, use QAPage markup instead.

Content guidelines

We created these education Q&A content guidelines to ensure that our users are connected with learning resources that are relevant. If we find content that violates these guidelines, we'll respond appropriately, which may include taking manual action and not displaying your content in the education Q&A rich result on Google.

  • Education Q&A pages must follow the same content guidelines for Q&A pages.
  • Your page must contain education related questions and answers. There must be at least one question and answer pairing on your page, and the answer must be related to and answer the user's question.
  • You are responsible for the accuracy and quality of your education Q&A pages through this feature. If a certain amount of your content is found to be inaccurate based on quality and pedagogical review processes, then all or a subset of your Q&A pages may not be eligible for this feature until you resolve the issues.

Structured data type definitions

You must include the required properties for your content to be eligible for display as a rich result. You can also include the recommended properties to add more information about your content, which could provide a better user experience.

Quiz

A Quiz is a set of flashcards (one or more), which are typically about the same concept or subject.

The full definition of Quiz is provided on schema.org. The Google-supported properties are the following:

Required properties
hasPart

Question

Nested information about the specific flashcard question for the quiz. Use one hasPart property to represent a single flashcard.

To include multiple flashcards, repeat this property. 

{
  "@type": "Quiz",
  "hasPart": {
    "@type": "Question"
  }
}
Recommended properties
about

Thing

Nested information about the underlying concept behind the Quiz. 

{
  "@type": "Quiz",
  "about": {
    "@type": "Thing"
  }
}
about.name

Text

Nested information about the underlying concept behind the Quiz. Multiple entries of this property are allowed.

{
  "@type": "Quiz",
  "about": {
    "@type": "Thing",
    "name": "Cell transport"
  }
}
educationalAlignment

AlignmentObject

The quiz's alignment to an established educational framework. This property can be repeated to align the quiz with a field of study or domain, and the target grade or educational standard.

{
  "@type": "Quiz",
  "educationalAlignment": []
}
educationalAlignment.alignmentType

Text

A category of alignment between the learning resource and the framework node for the quiz. Google Search uses the LRMI standard.

Repeat the alignmentType property to specify both the field of study and the target grade or educational standard.

  • To specify the field of study or domain of the quiz, set the alignmentType property to the educationalSubject value.
  • To specify the target grade or educational standard of the quiz, set the alignmentType property to the educationalLevel value.

Here's how to specify both the educationalSubject and educationalLevel properties. 

{
  "@type": "Quiz",
  "educationalAlignment": [
     {
       "@type": "AlignmentObject",
       "alignmentType": "educationalSubject",
       "targetName": "Biology"
     },
     {
       "@type": "AlignmentObject",
       "alignmentType": "educationalLevel",
       "targetName": "Fifth grade"
     }

  ]
}
educationalAlignment.targetName

Text

The name of a node of an established educational framework. For example: "Grade 7: Cell Structure". 

{
  "@type": "Quiz",
  "educationalAlignment": [
     {
       "@type": "AlignmentObject",
       "targetName": "Grade 7: Cell Structure"
     }
  ]
}

Question

Each question corresponds to one flashcard, nested under the hasPart property of Quiz. Note that these Question requirements are different from the Question requirements for QAPage.

The full definition of Question is provided on schema.org. The Google-supported properties are the following:

Required properties
acceptedAnswer

Answer

The full text of the answer to a flashcard. There must only be one acceptedAnswer property per Question type.

{
  "@type": "Question",
  "acceptedAnswer": {
    "@type": "Answer",
    "text": "cell membranes"
  }
}
eduQuestionType

Text

The type of question. You must use this fixed value: Flashcard.

{
  "@type": "Question",
  "eduQuestionType": "Flashcard”
}
text

Text

The full text of the flashcard question.

{
  "@type": "Question",
  "text": "A protein on the surface of HIV can attach to proteins on the surface of healthy human cells. What are the attachment sites on the surface of the cells known as?"
}

Monitor rich results with Search Console

Search Console is a tool that helps you monitor how your pages perform in Google Search. You don't have to sign up for Search Console to be included in Google Search results, but it can help you understand and improve how Google sees your site. We recommend checking Search Console in the following cases:

  1. After deploying structured data for the first time
  2. After releasing new templates or updating your code
  3. Analyzing traffic periodically

After deploying structured data for the first time

After Google has indexed your pages, look for issues using the relevant Rich result status report. Ideally, there will be an increase of valid items, and no increase in invalid items. If you find issues in your structured data:

  1. Fix the invalid items.
  2. Inspect a live URL to check if the issue persists.
  3. Request validation using the status report.

After releasing new templates or updating your code

When you make significant changes to your website, monitor for increases in structured data invalid items.
  • If you see an increase in invalid items, perhaps you rolled out a new template that doesn't work, or your site interacts with the existing template in a new and bad way.
  • If you see a decrease in valid items (not matched by an increase in invalid items), perhaps you are no longer embedding structured data in your pages. Use the URL Inspection tool to learn what is causing the issue.

Analyzing traffic periodically

Analyze your Google Search traffic using the Performance Report. The data will show you how often your page appears as a rich result in Search, how often users click on it and what is the average position you appear on search results. You can also automatically pull these results with the Search Console API.

Troubleshooting

If you're having trouble implementing or debugging structured data, here are some resources that may help you.

  • If you're using a content management system (CMS) or someone else is taking care of your site, ask them to help you. Make sure to forward any Search Console message that details the issue to them.
  • Google does not guarantee that features that consume structured data will show up in search results. For a list of common reasons why Google may not show your content in a rich result, see the General Structured Data Guidelines.
  • You might have an error in your structured data. Check the list of structured data errors and the Unparsable structured data report.
  • If you received a structured data manual action against your page, the structured data on the page will be ignored (although the page can still appear in Google Search results). To fix structured data issues, use the Manual Actions report.
  • Review the guidelines again to identify if your content isn't compliant with the guidelines. The problem can be caused by either spammy content or spammy markup usage. However, the issue may not be a syntax issue, and so the Rich Results Test won't be able to identify these issues.
  • Troubleshoot missing rich results / drop in total rich results.
  • Allow time for re-crawling and re-indexing. Remember that it may take several days after publishing a page for Google to find and crawl it. For general questions about crawling and indexing, check the Google Search crawling and indexing FAQ.
  • Post a question in the Google Search Central forum.