Table of Contents
Forum and Q&A publishers can now clarify reply totals, quoted material, and AI use so Google better interprets discussions.
Google expanded its structured data support for forum and Q&A pages, adding properties that help you signal reply threads, quoted content, and whether content is human- or machine-generated. The update aims to reduce how Google misreads discussion and Q&A content.
What changed. Google’s QAPage docs now support commentCount and digitalSourceType. DiscussionForumPosting docs now support sharedContent plus the same commentCount and digitalSourceType.
The details. In Q&A markup, you can use commentCount on questions, answers, and comments to show total comments even if not fully marked up. answerCount + commentCount should equal total replies of any type.
How it works. digitalSourceType lets you flag whether content comes from a trained model or simpler automation. Use TrainedAlgorithmicMediaDigitalSource for LLM-style output and AlgorithmicMediaDigitalSource for simpler bots. If omitted, Google assumes human-generated content.
What’s new for forums. sharedContent lets you mark the primary item shared in a post. Google accepts WebPage, ImageObject, VideoObject, and referenced DiscussionForumPosting or Comment, including quotes or reposts.
Why we care. This gives you more precise control over how Google reads modern community content — especially forum-heavy sites, support communities, UGC platforms, and Q&A sections. Google can better distinguish answers from comments, count partial threads across pagination, and identify when a post mainly shares a link, image, video, or quoted reply.
The documentation. It was updated March 24.
If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on Google News too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.
If you want to read more like this article, you can visit our Technology category.
