What a rich snippet is, and how structured data leads to one

A plain result and a rich one

A standard Google result is a title, the site name and address, and a line or two of description. A rich snippet adds something taken from the page, such as a rating, a price, stock status, an event date or a recipe's cooking time.

Google gets those details from structured data, usually Schema.org markup written as JSON-LD, which says what the page is and what its key values are. Google's own documentation calls them rich results. "Rich snippet" is the older name, and still the one most people search for.

Why people want them

A result showing a price and "In stock" tells the searcher more than a bare link, and a recipe result with a photo and a cooking time takes more room on the page. Whether that brings more clicks depends on the query and on what else is on the page. Treat any percentage you read as someone else's result, not a forecast for yours.

The quieter benefit is fit. Someone who has seen your price or event date before clicking already knows what they are clicking into.

The main types still shown

Since January 2025 Google shows breadcrumbs on desktop results only, not on mobile.

How markup turns into a rich result

Google reads structured data when it crawls a page. If the markup is valid, matches what the page shows and follows Google's guidelines, the page becomes eligible. Google then decides, query by query, whether to show the rich result. Eligible and shown are different things, and Google promises only the first.

What Google checks, in short:

1. The markup describes what a visitor can see on the page, not something else.
2. The properties Google marks as required for that type are present.
3. The JSON-LD is valid, with the right nesting and value types.
4. Nothing is made up. Invented ratings or markup for hidden content can bring a manual action, and the page loses its rich results.

Rich results Google has retired

In August 2023 Google limited the FAQ rich result, the expandable questions under a listing, to well-known government and health sites. On 7 May 2026 it stopped showing it for those sites as well, and in June 2026 it removed the FAQ documentation. No site gets an FAQ rich result now. HowTo rich results went in September 2023. Google has since dropped several less common types as well.

So a guide that still sells FAQ markup as the quick way to a bigger listing is out of date. FAQPage is still worth publishing, for another reason. It marks which text is a question and which is its answer, so a machine does not have to infer that from your headings. That may help a search engine or an AI system read the page. It does not make either of them show or cite it.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "FAQPage",
  "mainEntity": [
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "Is there parking at the restaurant?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Yes. Guests park free in the courtyard behind us."
      }
    }
  ]
}

Star ratings

Stars show only for certain types, among them products, recipes, books, courses and events. Since 2019 Google has not shown review stars for a LocalBusiness or Organization that marks up reviews of itself on its own site. Google calls those self-serving reviews. A restaurant that adds AggregateRating to its own homepage markup should not expect stars from it.

The stars you see beside a local business in Google usually come from the reviews on its Google Business Profile. Google's guidelines also forbid copying ratings from other websites into your markup, so a TripAdvisor score does not belong there either.

Checking eligibility

1. Open Google's Rich Results Test.
2. Enter a page address, or paste the code.
3. Read which rich result types the page qualifies for.
4. Fix the errors first, then decide which warnings matter.

Run it whenever you change markup. Later, the reports in Google Search Console show what Google found on the pages it actually crawled.

What AI Boost for Joomla publishes

Once you switch its Schema.org output on and fill in your details, AI Boost for Joomla adds one JSON-LD block to each indexable page. Depending on the page and your settings, the block holds:

• your business, as the site type you chose from 36, such as LocalBusiness, Restaurant or LodgingBusiness
• WebPage and BreadcrumbList for the page itself
• Article or BlogPosting on articles, with author, dates and publisher
• FAQPage, when "Auto-Detect FAQ from Content" finds question headings on the page, or, with the YOOtheme extension, a YOOtheme accordion whose every title is a question
• Event, for articles in the category you chose once their start date and location are filled in

It publishes no Product, Review or AggregateRating markup, so it does not make a page eligible for star ratings. Fields you leave empty stay out of the markup, and that decides how much of the Rich Results Test a page passes. Whether Google shows a rich result is Google's decision, and no plugin can promise one.