How I almost made myself invisible to AI — and every recruiter using it.
Yesterday, 1:23 AM after work, I went to bed thinking I had finally nailed it. Two GitHub Pages live. Schema.org JSON-LD in the <head>. Google Search Console verified.
At 7:42 AM the validator destroyed that illusion. Four critical errors. I sat there with my coffee, realising I had spent three evenings building something that looked great to humans… but was technically invisible to every AI crawler out there.
The four errors
- Inconsistent
id— the personal schema used one id, the project schema referenced a plain name. Fix: reference the same id everywhere. - Image type mismatch —
"image": "url-string"where the validator expected anImageObject. Machines need structure, not just URLs. - Lying
dateModified— a hardcoded date the validator flagged as stale. Now it updates by weeks. - Graph chaos — personal site used a
@graph, the project page a flatSoftwareApplication. They weren't talking to each other. Fix: make the project schema reference the Person from the graph by id.
I fixed it that morning. Now both pages pass with zero errors. AI can finally connect the dots. Google sees the structured data properly.
If you're building in public — especially if you want recruiters or AI tools to find you — go check your schema today. It takes 30 seconds. validator.schema.org is free and brutally honest.
Ever thought your structured data was perfect… until the validator humbled you?