Google Search adds support for FAQ and How-to structured data

At Google I/O just now, Google announced support for new structured data for FAQ and How-to markup. Yes, Google announced FAQ and How-to markup at the 2018 Google I/O event a year ago, but now Google has launched new structured markup to bring these rich search results to life.

How-to results. How-to search results in Google will show searchers step-by-step information on how to accomplish specific tasks directly in the search results. Google has published how-to documentation for your developers to use when adding the markup to your own pages and also how to add this to Google Assistant. The documentation includes information on the steps, tools, duration, and other properties you would include in your markup.

Here are screen shots of what it looks like in search:

Here are screen shots of what this looks like in the Google Assistant:

How-to Search Console report. Google also added a new How-to enhancement report in Search Console that shows you your errors, warnings and valid items for pages with HowTo structured data. Here is a screen shot of this report.

FAQ results. Google also announced new search results for FAQs in search and Google Assistant. This is designed for FAQ pages that provide a list of frequently asked questions and answers on a particular topic. Adding this structure data helps Google show questions and answers directly on Google Search and the Assistant. The documentation for this markup can be found here and for Assistant can be found here.

Google warns you not to confuse this with QA pages, which is devoted to forums or other pages where users can submit answers to questions.

Here is how FAQ results look in search:

Here is how FAQ results look in Assistant:

Google also launched a Google Search Console enhancement report for FAQ structured data.

Why we care. Making your search results more prominent in Google search may drive more clicks to your web site from Google search. But at the same time, if the searcher can get the full answer directly in Google search or on Google Assistant, you may never see that searcher end up on your web site. We recommend testing this markup on the relevant pages and see if it leads to more traffic and conversions for your business.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.