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Rich snippets vs rich results: what changed

·4 min read

Rich results are Google search results that show extra information pulled from a page's structured data, such as review stars, a price, a recipe's cooking time or a breadcrumb trail. Rich snippets is the older name for the same thing. Google switched its documentation to "rich results" in December 2017, so the two terms describe one feature, and only the newer one matches Google's current docs and Search Console reports.

The distinction that actually matters is a different one. Rich results come from markup you add. Featured snippets don't, and no markup can earn you one.

What are rich results?

A rich result is a search listing that Google expands with details from structured data on the page, usually JSON-LD written with the schema.org vocabulary. A plain result shows a title, a URL and a text snippet. A rich result adds something from the markup, like 4.6 stars from 312 reviews, "In stock, $129.00" or an event date.

The markup tells Google what the page contains in a form it doesn't have to guess at. Here is the kind of block that makes a product page eligible for price and rating details:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "Trail Runner 2 hiking boot",
  "aggregateRating": {
    "@type": "AggregateRating",
    "ratingValue": "4.6",
    "reviewCount": "312"
  },
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "price": "129.00",
    "priceCurrency": "USD",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock"
  }
}

Rich snippets vs rich results: what changed

Only the name changed. Google announced Rich Snippets on May 12, 2009, starting with reviews and people, read from microformats and RDFa. By 2016 it also used "rich cards" and "enriched results" for other formats.

Three names for one idea got confusing. On December 19, 2017, Google's Rich Results Test announcement said its documentation would call all of them "rich results" from then on. The same post launched the testing tool that later replaced the old Structured Data Testing Tool. Our post on what replaced the Structured Data Testing Tool covers that history.

The word "snippet" survives in a few feature names. Google's docs still say "review snippet" and "product snippet" for specific rich result types. So when you see "rich snippets" in a 2026 article, read it as "rich results" written by someone using the 2009 vocabulary.

Featured snippets are not rich results, and structured data has nothing to do with them. A featured snippet is the box that shows a quoted passage from a page above or among the regular results, often as the answer to a question. Google picks the passage from the page's visible text.

Google's featured snippets documentation answers the question of how to mark a page as a featured snippet with "You can't." Its systems decide.

Rich results Featured snippets
Source Structured data on the page The page's visible text
Markup needed Yes, for each type No
What you control Which types you mark up and their accuracy How clearly the page answers the question
How to opt out Remove the markup nosnippet or data-nosnippet

To compete for a featured snippet, put the question in a heading and answer it in the first sentence or two under it. To qualify for a rich result, add valid markup for a type Google still supports.

Which rich results Google still shows in 2026

Fewer than it used to. Google has retired several types, and markup for them earns nothing visible in Search now.

  • HowTo rich results ended in September 2023.
  • FAQ rich results shrank to government and health sites in August 2023, then stopped for every site on May 7, 2026. Our FAQ schema post covers what to do with the markup you already have.
  • In June 2025 Google phased out several more, including ClaimReview, Course info, estimated salary and vehicle listings.

The types worth the effort for most sites are Product, Review snippet, Article, Breadcrumb, Event, Local business, Organization, Recipe, Software app and Video. The full current list, with which schema to use on which page, is in our schema markup guide.

Does valid markup guarantee a rich result?

No. Valid markup makes a page eligible, and Google decides whether to show the feature. Its structured data guidelines state that Google does not guarantee your structured data will show up, even when the Rich Results Test says it is correct.

In practice, I see three reasons a page with clean markup shows a plain result:

  1. Google judged another layout better for that query, device or location. A recipe can get rich results for one search and a plain listing for another.
  2. The markup describes something the visible page doesn't show, such as a price that changed or self-serving ratings on a business's own page. Google ignores it or, in bad cases, issues a manual action.
  3. The type is retired or limited, so there is no rich result to win.

The Rich Results Test tells you whether a page qualifies. It cannot tell you whether a given search will display it. Search Console's rich result reports show what Google actually detected across your site after it crawls.

Check your schema markup for rich result eligibility

Our Schema Markup Checker reads every JSON-LD block in the HTML your server sends and checks each node against Google's rich result rules. It reports blocks that are not valid JSON, nodes with no @type, missing required and recommended properties, Offers without a price and incomplete ratings. It flags types whose rich results are retired, like FAQPage and HowTo, and recommends documented types the page is missing based on what it finds there. You can also paste JSON-LD to check a draft before it ships.

It doesn't run JavaScript, so markup injected by a tag manager won't appear, and it can't say whether Google will show a rich result. Each run costs 8 credits.

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