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Troubleshoot Structured Data not Showing in Search Results

In some cases, your structured data do not show in search results, even if your page is marked up correctly according to the Structured Data Testing Tool. So, you are wondering what could be the reason? This article includes useful resources and may assist you with this issue, or at least will point you to the right direction.

Reasons Why Rich Results Not Showing in SERP

Using structured data enables a feature to be present, it does not guarantee that it will be present. The Google algorithm tailors search results to create what it thinks is the best search experience for a user, depending on many variables, including search history, location, and device type.

Here are some common reasons why your rich results not showing in the Google search.

1. Google hasn't crawled your site since the change was made

The first reason could be simply that Google is not aware of the change yet. Search Results is not a live tool. Each time you modify your page's structured data you need to notify Google about those changes. To do so, log into your Google Search Console account and ask Google to re-index your pages in order to update its data.

2. Not enough time has passed since re-indexing

Although re-indexing can take anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 minutes for a page to be indexed or reindexed and updated in the search results, there are cases where some pages need more time in order to be analyzed by Google's algorithm. So be patient.

3. Images may not meet requirements or dimensions

In general, Google recommends most images for rich snippets to meet the following requirements:

  • If not instructed otherwise, images should be at least 160x90 pixels and at most 1920x1080 pixels (but see specific exceptions below).
  • The ratio aspect should not be greater than 3.0.
  • Use either .jpg, .png, or. gif format.
  • Images must be crawlable and indexable.
  • Use high-resolution images (minimum of 800K pixels when multiplying width and height).
  • Provide multiple images for each of the following aspect ratios: 16x9, 4x3, and 1x1.
  • Images must be relevant to the content.

4. Content is not crawlable or indexable

Make sure Google can crawl and index your content, including images. 

5. The rich result is not suitable for the keywords you are targeting

There is a possibility that Google does not feel your schema markup will add value to the search or meet their needs. There may be a video on your site with structured data. But when you search that topic keyword in Google, no video carousel or video rich results are shown from any site. If your rich result isn't showing, there may not be a problem with your site's structured data, but rather that Google isn't showing your structured data according to your keywords or topics.

6. The marked-up content is hidden from the user

Above all, make sure your structured data markup reflects the content of the page. If your structured data include a list of a product's reviews, those reviews should be also visible on the page. Doing otherwise Google is very likely to ignore your structured data and you may end up with a spammy structured data penalty.

7. The structured data has errors

Adding structured data to a page is not enough. You will also need to make sure that there are no structured data errors. To learn how you can check the validity and the correctness of your markup, visit the How to test your Structured Data guide.

8. You're marking up your page using two formats

Don't mix microdata and JSON-LD. You should choose one format in our case the JSON-LD format.

9. You're marking up your homepage

This is a big NO as Google does not support displaying rich results on the homepage. You should be marking up only the inner pages of your site.

10. Google has decided not to show the rich results

As already mentioned, using structured data enables a feature to be present, it does not guarantee that it will be present.

Resources

Take a look at some useful resources regarding this matter:

Last updated on Nov 26th 2024 12:11
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