Article No. 65

Rich Results Types: What’s Actually Live in Google Search (2026)

Abstract

Rich result eligibility changes often enough that a "which types are worth implementing" page goes stale fast, and the date on this heading is load-bearing, not decorative. This is a...

Editorial Staff Published Read 6 min read

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Rich result eligibility changes often enough that a “which types are worth implementing” page goes stale fast, and the date on this heading is load-bearing, not decorative. This is a snapshot of what’s actually obtainable for an ordinary commercial site as of mid-2026, not a permanent reference. Two of the biggest changes in this category happened this year: verify current status again before you make a schema investment decision based on this page.

The most consequential of those two changes is recent enough to be worth stating plainly up front. FAQ rich results were already restricted to a narrow set of authoritative government and health sites starting in August 2023, meaning virtually no ordinary commercial site had access to them for the last few years regardless of markup quality. As of May 7, 2026, Google removed the feature from Search entirely, for every site, including the government and health sites that had remained eligible. If a piece of content anywhere still frames FAQ schema as a route to a visible rich result, that content is now wrong on two counts, not one: it was already wrong about eligibility for commercial sites since 2023, and it’s now wrong about the feature existing for anyone at all.

Rich result vs. ranking factor

A rich result is a visually enhanced search listing, a star rating, a price, an event date, shown when Google decides a page both qualifies and is a good match for a given query. It is not a ranking factor. Valid structured data can make a page eligible for a rich result; it does not move that page up or down in rankings on its own (General structured data guidelines). Full explanation of that distinction is in the complete schema guide; the short version above is the only context needed to read the table below correctly.

Status table: what’s live, restricted, or dead

Type Status for an ordinary commercial site (mid-2026) Notes
Article Live Applies to news, blog, and general article content. See Google's <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/article">Article structured data</a> docs.
Product Live Covers product snippets, merchant listings, and price/availability display; has its own detailed quality requirements.
Review / AggregateRating Live Must reflect a real, verifiable rating of the specific entity marked up; fake or self-serving reviews violate Google's policy.
Breadcrumb (<!–INLINECODE0–>) Live Still current and worth implementing; covered in the sitelinks and navigation schema guide.
Video Live Applies to pages with embedded or hosted video content matching the marked-up metadata.
Event Live Requires accurate, current event details; stale past-dated events can hurt eligibility for future markup on the same domain.
JobPosting Live Has strict freshness and accuracy requirements; expired listings left marked up as active violate policy.
Organization / LocalBusiness Live Contributes to Knowledge Panel and business-detail display rather than a standalone SERP snippet; covered in the Organization, Person, and Brand schema guide.
<strong>FAQPage</strong> <strong>Dead, for every site</strong> Google restricted FAQ rich results to a narrow set of authoritative government and health sites in August 2023, then removed the feature from Google Search entirely as of May 7, 2026. The <!–INLINECODE1–> schema.org type itself is still valid to use and won't cause errors, but it produces no rich result in Google Search for anyone, on any site, as of this writing (<a href="https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/faqpage">FAQ rich results documentation and deprecation notice</a>).
<strong>HowTo</strong> <strong>Dead</strong> Deprecated on mobile in early 2023 and on desktop as of September 13, 2023. Not a live Google Search feature as of 2026 (<a href="https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/08/howto-faq-changes">Changes to HowTo and FAQ rich results</a>).
Sitelinks Search Box (<!–INLINECODE2–>/<!–INLINECODE3–>) Dead Deprecated October 21, 2024, retired globally November 21, 2024. Not a rich result type to target for new implementation, and not something a schema type "produces" reliably even historically, since usage had already declined before removal (<a href="https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/10/sitelinks-search-box">Farewell, Sitelinks Search Box</a>).

Do not implement FAQPage or HowTo markup expecting a visible rich result. Both are correctly described here as dead for this purpose, not “declining” or “restricted,” full removal from Google Search is the current 2026 status for FAQ, and has been the status for HowTo since 2023.

What triggers eligibility for the still-live types

Each live type routes to its own deeper coverage where one exists in this cluster; this is a one-line pointer, not a re-explanation.

  • Article needs the properties Google documents (headline, image, publish/modified dates, author) and genuinely original content. Full worked example in the complete schema guide.
  • Product needs accurate, current price and availability data specifically, stale pricing is one of the more common causes of lost eligibility for this type.
  • Review/AggregateRating needs the rating to be about the specific entity on the page, not a general site-wide trust badge dressed up as a product review.
  • Breadcrumb needs a BreadcrumbList reflecting a real, typical navigation path. Detail in the sitelinks and navigation schema guide.
  • Video, Event, and JobPosting each have type-specific required properties documented on their respective Google Search Central pages; the common failure mode across all three is stale data (an expired job, a past event, a broken video URL) left marked up as current. JobPosting specifically requires removing or updating the markup once a position is filled or closed, leaving it in place past that point is a documented policy violation, not just poor housekeeping.
  • Organization/LocalBusiness contributes to entity understanding and Knowledge Panel display rather than a single dedicated SERP snippet. Full coverage in the Organization, Person, and Brand schema guide.

None of the still-live types above skip the validation step. A page can use exactly the right schema type and still lose eligibility over a technical error, a missing required property, a malformed date, a relative URL where an absolute one is expected. That layer of troubleshooting is deliberately not repeated here; it has its own full reference in the structured data troubleshooting and validation guide, and duplicating a shortened version of it on every post in this cluster would just create more places for it to drift out of date.

How to check whether your content currently qualifies

Beyond the technical validity of the markup itself (covered fully in the structured data troubleshooting and validation guide), Google evaluates rich result eligibility against its general content and quality guidelines. The specifics that come up most often:

  • Accuracy. The structured data must be a true representation of what’s actually on the page. A rating that doesn’t match visible reviews, or an event date that doesn’t match the page content, is a policy violation, not a minor mismatch.
  • Freshness, for time-sensitive types. Event and JobPosting content in particular needs to reflect current reality; Google has specifically flagged expired job postings left marked up as active as a quality problem.
  • Originality. Rich result eligibility isn’t a mechanical checklist independent of content quality. Thin or duplicated content marked up correctly is still thin or duplicated content, and Google’s broader quality systems apply regardless of schema validity.
  • No manual action. A structured data manual action removes rich result eligibility for the affected markup without changing the page’s ranking, which is exactly the distinction the top of this guide opened with.

Conclusion

As of mid-2026, Article, Product, Review, Breadcrumb, Video, Event, JobPosting, and Organization/LocalBusiness are the categories worth a schema investment for an ordinary commercial site. FAQPage and HowTo are not, both are fully dead as Google Search rich results, regardless of what older content elsewhere (including earlier versions of this cluster) says. Don’t build a schema roadmap around either one, and re-check this table before you rely on it, since this is exactly the kind of status that keeps changing.

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