Google Search Console mislabeled structured data errors as errors

Instead of labeling many of the structured data issues as “warnings” Google labeled many as “errors” within the rich results reports in Google Search Console. Google fixed the reporting issue on October 25th and as a result, you may see a lot of the errors move from a critical status to a warning status.

Google’s statement. Google posted a statement saying that on October 25, 2022 “Some structured data issues were mislabeled as errors, when in fact they are warnings.”

Action taken. Google has and will relabel these structured data issues correctly in your Search Console reports going forward. So many of the errors will be relabeled as warnings.

Impact. While there is no impact directly in Google Search, meaning, your rich results in Google Search were probably showing anyway, there were issues with the Search Console reports. Google said, as a result, “these issues will move from the critical error table to the warning table in your rich result reports.” “The issue count in the critical errors table will drop to zero, and that issue will be added to the warnings table with the pre-zero count,” Google added.

Google Search not impacted. Again, this was just a reporting issue, this had no impact on what was visible in Google Search. Google wrote “This is strictly a reporting issue and did not affect whether or not a rich result could be displayed in Google Search results.”

Why we care. If you notice a bunch of structured data critical issues going away, this is probably why. While it had no real impact in Google Search, your rich results reports likely will change. And if you were fixing critical issues that did not need to be fixed, this is why. In any event, give it a few days and recheck the rich results report to see which issues are errors and which are just warnings.