## 🤔 What does a null field in schema markup mean?

When OTTO detects existing schema markup on your site (shown as **FOUND**), it reads the current values. If a field shows `null`, it means the field exists in your schema but has no value assigned to it.

Null fields are **normal and expected** in FOUND schemas — they highlight areas where data is missing.

A common source of null fields is markup imported from a CMS (such as WordPress), which can leave required fields empty or inject malformed values. OTTO now sanitizes FOUND content before storing it, so newly imported schemas are cleaned automatically. If you still see null fields left over from an earlier import, regenerating the schema (below) refreshes them.

## 🔧 How to fix null fields

1. In OTTO, find the page with the null field warning
2. Click **Regenerate Schema** for that page
3. OTTO will attempt to auto-populate the field based on your site content and Brand Vault data
4. Review the regenerated schema and deploy it

## 🚫 What if the field is not applicable to my business?

If your business genuinely does not use a field, you have two options:

- **Regenerate** — OTTO will omit fields it cannot populate from your content
- **Edit manually** — click the field in the schema editor and remove it or set an appropriate value

Schema markup that fails validation (for example, a missing required field) is not deployed unless validation was explicitly suppressed for it. You can also add custom fields in the schema editor — they are preserved through the edit, save, and deploy cycle and will not be stripped or trigger warnings.

## 📋 FOUND vs. GENERATED schemas

- **FOUND** — schema OTTO detected already on your page. Null fields here reflect gaps in your existing markup.
- **GENERATED** — schema OTTO created from scratch. These are fully populated before deployment.

## 👀 Seeing a FOUND schema or null fields you didn't expect?

A few past issues could cause a schema to appear as FOUND when it shouldn't — all are now resolved:

- **Stale FOUND schemas** — a page could still show "schema detected" after its markup was removed or never actually parsed. OTTO now clears these stale FOUND records on the next crawl sync, so they no longer report null fields for markup that isn't there.
- **OTTO-deployed FAQ schema shown as FOUND** — FAQ schema that OTTO itself deployed was sometimes mislabeled as FOUND instead of SUGGESTED. This has been fixed, so OTTO-managed schema is now categorized correctly.
- **Internal fields in the preview** — internal display fields once appeared in the JSON-LD preview panel for older FOUND schemas; these are now stripped from the preview.

If a page still shows leftover null fields from before these fixes, click **Regenerate Schema** to refresh it.