Schema Types That Actually Earn Rich Results in 2026
Nine types still earn a visual treatment. Two famous ones were retired. Here is the current list, from Google's own documentation.
About nine schema types still change what your result looks like in Google: Breadcrumb, Product, Review snippet, Recipe, Video, Event, Job posting, Local business and Discussion forum. FAQ and HowTo no longer do. Everything else in the gallery is markup Google reads and mostly does not draw.
Which schema types still earn a rich result?
This list comes from Google's structured data gallery and the individual type pages behind it, checked against the live documentation. Every row is a feature that changes the look of the result, not just what Google understands about the page.
| Type | What it needs | What it actually shows |
|---|---|---|
| Breadcrumb | BreadcrumbList with at least two ListItem entries: position, name, item | The site path above the result. Desktop only since January 2025 |
| Product | Product with merchant listing or product snippet properties | Price, availability and rating in the snippet, plus entry to Popular products and shopping panels |
| Review snippet | Review or AggregateRating on a supported type, with author, itemReviewed and reviewRating | The star line. Not available when a business rates itself |
| Recipe | Recipe with name and image | Recipe result in Search and Images. Add ItemList for a host carousel |
| Video | VideoObject with name, thumbnailUrl and uploadDate | Thumbnail, key moments, and a LIVE badge with BroadcastEvent |
| Event | Event with name, startDate and location | Event listing with date and venue. Needs a real physical location |
| Job posting | JobPosting with title, description, datePosted, hiringOrganization and a location | Entry to the job search experience, in supported regions only |
| Local business | LocalBusiness with name and address | Knowledge panel details and business carousels |
| Discussion forum | DiscussionForumPosting with author, datePublished and content | Discussions and forums results. Genuine user posts only, not articles |
Which rich results has Google retired?
Three, and all three are still being recommended by plugins and posts nobody has updated.
- FAQ. Google added a deprecation notice on 8 May 2026 saying the feature would stop appearing from 7 May 2026, then removed the documentation in June 2026. It had already been cut back in September 2023 to well known, authoritative government and health sites. There is no FAQ rich result left to earn.
- HowTo. Gone since September 2023. The changelog says the documentation was removed because the rich result "is no longer shown in search results, on both desktop and mobile devices".
- Sitelinks search box. Documentation removed in November 2024, because the feature is no longer available in Google Search results.
Keeping the markup costs nothing, and other systems may still read it. Expecting a box in Google because of it is the part that is out of date.
Is structured data a ranking factor?
Google's structured data policies page never claims it lifts rankings. What it does say is worth reading twice. A structured data manual action costs a page its eligibility for rich results and does not change how that page ranks in web search. The same page warns that valid markup is no guarantee of display, even when the Rich Results Test is happy. So the honest word is eligibility, not position. Markup buys a page a chance at a different looking result, and nothing more.
Which schema helps without showing anything?
A few types are still worth adding even though no badge appears.
- Article has no required properties at all. Google's advice is to add what applies: author, datePublished, dateModified, headline, image. It helps Google pick better title text, images and dates. There is no markup requirement to be eligible for Top stories.
- Organization also has no required properties. Part of it disambiguates your company in search, part of it feeds visual elements like which logo shows next to your results and in the knowledge panel.
Both are quick, both are sensible, and neither produces a screenshot you can show a client.
How do you check what your markup is eligible for?
Two tools, both Google's, answering different questions. The Rich Results Test checks one page during development and reports which features that page qualifies for. The rich result status reports in Search Console tell you what happened across the whole site after deployment, including problems on pages you never thought to test. Google recommends the first while building and the second to monitor.
Neither will tell you the thing that matters most: whether the type you spent the afternoon on still produces anything at all. Check the gallery page first. If a type is not listed there, it is not a rich result any more. For the wider technical picture, our AI readiness checker looks at structured data alongside crawler access and metadata, and the AI readiness guide explains what each check is for.
One last note on priorities. Markup only matters on pages Google can already reach and render, so if your sitemap is broken or your load times are poor, fix those first. The Core Web Vitals guide covers the second half of that sentence.