Google search console acceptedAnswer error

zogstrip · March 30, 2026, 9:23am

Thanks for the report, @davidb’s recent work seems to have surfaced this issue.

Will be fixed by

github.com/discourse/discourse

FIX: Skip QAPage schema when topic has no visible answers (#38964)

main ← fix/qa-page-schema-no-answers

merged 01:02PM - 02 Apr 26 UTC

ZogStriP

+156 -61

Google Search Console reports acceptedAnswer/suggestedAnswer errors on topics th…at emit QAPage structured data with answerCount:0 and neither field present. This affects single-post topics, topics where the only replies are hidden or small action posts, and topics whose accepted answer has been hidden. The fix introduces two checks: 1. A `has_eligible_answers?` query in SchemaUtils that verifies at least one visible, regular-type reply exists before emitting QAPage schema (both JSON-LD and microdata). Topics without eligible answers fall back to the default DiscussionForumPosting schema. 2. A `has_answers` policy in BuildSchemaMarkup that gates on the materialized accepted_answer/suggested_answers after they've been fetched, catching any edge cases the topic-level check might miss. Additionally, `fetch_accepted_answer` now checks post visibility via `Guardian.new.can_see_post?` (anonymous perspective) so hidden accepted answers are excluded from schema output rather than being advertised to search engines. The `"answered only"` setting also uses this visibility check instead of just testing whether an answer_post_id exists. https://meta.discourse.org/t/399525

Topic		Replies	Views
Either 'acceptedAnswer' or 'suggestedAnswer' should be specified Support	3	960	March 24, 2019
Wrong answerCount value from discourse-solved Bug solved	8	2574	February 20, 2019
Missing field 'text' (in 'mainEntity.suggestedAnswer') Bug	29	358	May 12, 2026
Missing field mainEntity.acceptedAnswer.text Bug solved	17	8767	December 6, 2022
Support schema.org QAPage and Google rich results Feature solved	28	8482	May 31, 2024

Google search console acceptedAnswer error

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