What Are Rich Snippets and Why Should You Check Your Structured Data?

When you search on Google, some results show more than a title and a short description. You might see star ratings, a price, opening hours, event dates or a trail of breadcrumbs. These extra details are called rich snippets (or rich results), and they are built from a hidden layer of code on the web page called structured data.

This guide explains what rich snippets are, how structured data works, and why it is worth checking that yours is correct. You can check any web page for free with our Rich Snippet Checker.

What are rich snippets?

A normal search result is a blue title, a web address and a short description. A rich snippet adds extra information that helps people decide whether to click. Depending on the type of page, search engines can show:

• Prices and availability for products
• Star ratings and review counts for products, recipes and some other content
• Dates, times and locations for events
• Breadcrumbs showing where a page sits on a website
• Cooking times and ingredients for recipes
• Salary and location for job vacancies
• Video thumbnails and key moments

Search engines choose when to show a rich snippet, and not every type of markup produces one. Google has also reduced the number of rich result types over the years. For example, FAQ results are now shown only for a small group of well-known government and health websites, and HowTo results have been removed. Valid markup makes a page eligible for a rich result. It never guarantees one.

How does structured data work?

Structured data is code that describes what is on a page in a form search engines and AI tools can read easily: this page is a product, it costs this much, it is in stock, and 24 customers have rated it 4.8. It uses a shared vocabulary called schema.org and is usually written in a format called JSON-LD, which Google recommends. It sits in the page code and is invisible to visitors.

Here is a simple example for a product:

{\n  "@context": "https://schema.org",\n  "@type": "Product",\n  "name": "Garden bench",\n  "image": "https://example.co.uk/bench.jpg",\n  "offers": {\n    "@type": "Offer",\n    "price": "149.00",\n    "priceCurrency": "GBP",\n    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock"\n  }\n}

Other formats exist, including Microdata and RDFa, which are added to the visible content of the page, but JSON-LD is now the most common because it is kept separate from the page design.

Why check your structured data?

Structured data is easy to get wrong, and mistakes are invisible. The page looks perfectly normal, nothing breaks, and the only sign is that the rich results you hoped for never appear. Checking it is worthwhile for several reasons:

• Small mistakes make markup useless. A missing comma makes the whole block unreadable. A price written as "£149" instead of "149.00", a date written as "2 November 2026" instead of "2026-11-02", or a rating outside its scale are all errors that can cause search engines to ignore the data.
• Required and recommended properties differ. Each type needs certain properties to qualify for a rich result, and others are recommended to make the result more complete. A check tells you which are missing.
• Websites change. Plugin updates, theme changes, redesigns and migrations can quietly remove, duplicate or break structured data. Plugins sometimes add conflicting markup on the same page. Checking after a change catches problems early.
• The data has to match the page. Google expects structured data to describe content that visitors can actually see. Out-of-date prices, ratings that are not shown on the page, or markup copied from another page can lead to the data being ignored.
• Some markup will never show a rich result. For example, Google does not show star ratings for reviews of a business that are published on that business's own website. A check helps you spend your effort where it can make a difference.
• AI tools read it too. AI assistants and AI-powered search use structured data as a clear, machine-readable description of your business, services and content. Accurate markup is one of the things that helps your business be understood and mentioned. It is part of our free AI review.

How to check a web page

1. Open the Rich Snippet Checker.
2. Enter the address of the page you want to check, for example the page for a product, a service or an event, and choose Check page.
3. Read the summary at the top. It tells you how many structured data items were found and how many are valid, have warnings or have errors.
4. Open each item to see its type, the problems found and the data itself. Errors are things that are missing or wrongly formatted and need fixing. Warnings are recommended properties that are missing, so the markup is valid but could be more complete.

The checker finds JSON-LD, Microdata and RDFa, and checks the common types, including products, offers, reviews, articles, local businesses, events, recipes, breadcrumbs and organisations. It is a guide based on what Google documents. For a second opinion, each result links to Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema.org validator. You can also see how Google has read your markup in the Enhancements reports in Google Search Console.

Common problems we see

• No structured data at all, or only a basic business description
• Invalid JSON, usually a trailing comma or an unescaped quote
• Dates, prices and currencies in the wrong format
• Product markup with no price, or with no offers, reviews or ratings
• Relative web addresses for images and logos instead of full addresses
• Two plugins producing duplicate or conflicting markup
• Markup that describes content no longer on the page

What to do with the results

Fix errors first, then add the recommended properties that make sense for your business. If your website uses WordPress, an SEO plugin may already produce much of this markup, and a setting or a missing field may be all that is needed. After you make a change, check the page again, and then allow time for search engines to re-read it.

Remember that a clean result means your markup is in good shape. It does not control what Google chooses to show. Fresh, accurate, useful content and a well-built website still matter most.

Need a hand?

If the checker shows problems you would rather not fix yourself, or you have no structured data at all, we can help. Structured data is part of our SEO services, and we can also review how ready your website is for AI search with a free AI review. Contact us and we will be happy to talk it through.