Google Officially Launches FAQ & How-To Structured Data Markup

May 9, 2019 - 8:10 am 2 by

Google Markup Highlighter

Google announced it a year ago at Google I/O 2018 but didn't launch FAQ and How-to structured data until a year later at this years 2019 Google I/O event. It comes with new rich results and new Google Search Console enhancement reports.

How-to Structured Data

Here is what how-to rich results look like in search and they should be live now:

Google How To Tile

Google How To Tie

Here are the developer docs on how to add the markup to pages that have step-by-step directions on how to related tasks.

Here is how they look like on the Google Assistant:

How To Assistant

How To Assistant2

Here are the developer docs on how to add the markup to pages that have step-by-step directions on how to related tasks specific to Google Assistant. I should note, as Glenn Gabe said - you do not need a web page to add this markup, you can feed this information without a page!

Here is the Google Search Console enhancement for how-to structured data:

click for full size

FAQ Structured Data

Also we have FAQ structured data which is not to be confused with QA markup. FAQs are for single pages that have frequently asked questions, whereas QA markup is for sites like forums, reddit, etc that have many answers from many users about one question.

Here is what it looks like in search:

Google Faq Markup

Here is the markup for search in their developer docs.

Here is what it looks like in the Assistant:

Google Faq Markup Assistant

Here are the developer docs for the assistant markup.

You will only see these new enhancement reports if Google picks up on the markup on your pages.

Reaction Is Mixed

As I said on Search Engine Land - you really need to test it out to see if it will benefit you. If you are ranking in position 6, then adding the markup may help your listing move up or richen up and see a higher CTR. But if you are in position one, and you add the markup and searchers can get all the answers and steps without clicking through - then what do you do? What happens when your competitor adds the markup and the searcher's eye balls race by your listing and to your competitors?

Test it out - see the CTR, see the traffic changes and make the call.

Here are some reactions from the community:

And some chatter on WebmasterWorld on this:

Great business plan, the publisher create the content, markups the content and then Google takes it for free, serves it's ads on it, collects data, and pockets all the cash and what do we get?

It gets worse!

Its a catch 22. If you don't add the markup and give your content away for free, then someone else will and the what little revenue you had will continue to decay, as your website is not evolving with the market.

That is “catch 0” not “catch 22”

No point having a website

The structured data benefits no one but Google, it keeps users there longer, for us SEO's it offers no value, stop using Google folks. I'm telling you Bing and DDG work pretty darn good.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

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