AQA (AI Question Answer)

What is AQA?

AQA (AI Question Answer) is an open standard that enriches Schema.org FAQPage markup with AI-specific metadata. Unlike standard FAQ markup, AQA adds per-question dates, sourced citations, change history and maintenance signals.

AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity can then assess whether an answer is current, verifiable and maintained — and cite it with confidence.

The 3 Conformance Levels

AQA Basic

Minimal implementation, achievable in 5 minutes:

• dateCreated and dateModified on each question
• At least one citation (source URL) per answer
• author and inLanguage at document level

AQA Standard

For teams actively maintaining their FAQs:

• All of AQA Basic +
• updateFrequency (weekly, monthly, quarterly)
• changelog with modification history
• questionVersion (semantic versioning)
• Sector classification via NACE codes

AQA Full

For enterprises with traceability requirements:

• All of AQA Standard +
• monitoringSources (2+ monitored sources)
• Per-question author with verifiable credentials
• Complete changelog with changeSourceUrl

AQA Shield

Available at any level, Shield adds:

• aiUsagePolicy — declares permitted uses (RAG citation, training, summarization)
• contentSignature — SHA-256 hash proving content integrity

Why implement AQA?

• Increased AI visibility — AI systems prioritize content with verifiable provenance
• Reliable citations — your answers are cited with source
• Schema.org compatible — every AQA block is also a valid Schema.org document
• Open source — MIT license, no vendor lock-in

Full specification: aqa-spec.org