Google revealed that it is deprecating the How-To rich results in an effort to streamline the search results pages.
Google declared that the How-To Rich Results were completely gone. It is still possible to use the schema for it, but doing so will have no positive impact on the search results.
The How-To rich results have been removed for the stated reason of streamlining the search results pages.
How-To Rich Results
The HowTo Schema structured data was used by the How-To rich results to determine whether a webpage should be included in a rich result.
As is customary with structured data, a webpage’s structured data simply qualifies it to appear as a rich result; it does not guarantee that it will.
If publishers continue to use the how-to markup, the structured data will have no impact on them and won’t be of any service to them.
When Google Search was available, this structured data was previously displayed in all available languages and locations.
Screenshot of How-To Rich Result
Google previously reduced the visibility of the How-To rich results such that they only appeared on the desktop and deleted them entirely from mobile search.
Google didn’t make it clear that it planned to take away the how-to rich results on the desktop.
That’s now different.
The desktop versions of the search results pages no longer contain any rich results, according to Google.
The How-To rich results have been deemed obsolete.
Google declared:
“As part of our ongoing efforts to make Google’s search results easier to understand, we’re bringing the How-to change to desktop as well. Google Search no longer displays How-to rich results on desktop as of September 13, indicating that this result type is no longer supported.
The performance report’s metrics for the How-to search appearance and the number of impressions reported in the How-to enhancement reports will both reflect this change.
We will stop supporting the How-to search appearance, rich result report, and support in the Rich results test in 30 days since How-to results are no longer displayed in Google Search.
Support for How-to in the Search Console API will be shut off in 180 days to provide you time to modify your API calls.
Read Google’s official announcement:
Changes to HowTo and FAQ rich results
