Structured data for business websites: which rich results still work and which markup is wasted effort

What structured data does

Structured data is machine-readable information added to a page, usually as JSON-LD using the Schema.org vocabulary. It tells search engines explicitly that a page is about a product with a price, an organisation with a logo, an article with an author and date, or a business with an address and opening hours.

Search engines use this information to understand content and, for some types, to show enhanced results such as product prices and availability, review stars, breadcrumbs or event details. Structured data does not guarantee a rich result. Google decides whether to show one, and it is not a direct ranking boost in itself.

Changes that affected many websites

In August 2023 Google announced that FAQ rich results would be shown only for well-known, authoritative government and health websites. Most business sites that had added FAQ markup to service pages stopped seeing expandable questions in search results. At the same time, HowTo rich results were limited to mobile and later removed from desktop, and Google has since stopped showing them.

Google has also continued to retire rich result types it considers little used. The lesson is not that structured data is pointless, but that markup added purely to win a particular visual feature is fragile, while markup that accurately describes the page remains useful as search features change.

FAQ markup that reflects genuine questions and answers visible on the page is not harmful and can still help machines understand the content, including other search engines and tools. It should simply not be expected to produce expandable results in Google for most businesses.

Markup that remains valuable for business websites

For typical company websites, online shops and service businesses, a small set of types does most of the work. Each should match what the visitor can actually see on the page.

Organization

Name, logo, website, contact points and profiles, helping search engines connect the brand’s identity.

LocalBusiness

Address, opening hours, phone number and geographic details for businesses serving customers at locations.

Product and Offer

Price, currency, availability, condition and shipping or return details for product pages, supporting product results and merchant listings.

BreadcrumbList

The page’s position in the site hierarchy, often shown in place of a long URL.

Article

Headline, author, publication and modification dates and images for news, blog and insight content.

Event and JobPosting

Dates, locations and details for events and vacancies, where these are published on the site.

Review markup and self-serving reviews

Review stars in search results attract attention, so review markup is often misused. Google’s guidelines do not allow review rich results for reviews a business publishes about itself on its own site for the LocalBusiness and Organization types. Marking up testimonials on a company homepage will not produce stars and can be treated as a guideline violation.

Review markup is appropriate for product pages that show genuine customer reviews of that product, collected in a way that meets consumer protection rules, and for independent review content about products or services. Ratings in markup must match ratings displayed on the page.

Common errors

The most frequent problem is markup that does not match the page: prices that changed on the page but not in the structured data, out-of-stock products marked as available, opening hours that are outdated, or reviews in markup that are not visible to visitors. Mismatches can lead to rich results being withdrawn and undermine trust.

The second is duplication from plugins. A content management system theme, an SEO plugin and a shop extension each output their own Organization or Product markup with slightly different details, leaving search engines with conflicting information.

The third is markup that is technically valid but meaningless, such as marking every page as a WebPage with a generic description, or adding types that describe content the page does not contain.

Keeping structured data accurate

Generate structured data from the same source as visible content. When product prices, stock, opening hours or article dates come from a database or CMS, the markup should be built from those fields rather than typed separately. That keeps it accurate automatically.

Validate important templates with Google’s Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator, and monitor Search Console’s enhancement reports for errors and warnings after releases. Review which plugins output markup and switch off duplicates.

Finally, treat structured data as part of the page’s content model, not an SEO add-on. Accurate, consistent markup helps search engines, shopping platforms and other systems read the website as it changes, whichever visual features happen to be offered at the time.

Where this sits in what we do

This article covers one decision inside a wider engagement. The solution page sets out how that engagement runs, what it includes and what it costs to find out.

• Digital Growth — The ongoing programme — strategy, content, paid, organic and reporting — run as one thing that answers to pipeline rather than to channel dashboards.
• Quote to cash without re-keying: where the handoffs break
• Product data is the e-commerce growth lever nobody budgets for
• Failed subscription payments: reducing involuntary churn with retries, card updaters and better recovery flows
• Switzerland’s revised Data Protection Act: what it means for websites, analytics and marketing
• All insight articles