SEO and search results

What are rich snippets

Also known as: rich results, enhanced results, rich search results

Rodrigo Fávaro Founder of ROO3

Published October 4, 2026

Short answer

Rich snippets are Google results that show more than a title, URL and description: review stars, a product's price and stock, an event date, a recipe's cooking time, the page's path within the site. Google now calls the feature rich results. It depends on structured data on the page, which makes the result eligible but does not guarantee it will appear.

Hypothetical example

Two stores sell the same drill and appear one below the other in search. The first marked up its product page with structured data: name, a $79 price, in stock, a 4.6 rating from 212 reviews. The second marked up nothing.

Under the first store's title, the result can show $79.00, in stock, 4.6 stars (212). The second shows only a title and description. Both are on the same results page, but one answers the buyer's questions before the click.

Regular snippet, rich snippet and featured snippet

The names sound alike and get mixed up. A snippet is the bit of text Google shows for each page. The other features add to it or change its format, and each one comes from a different source.

Four result formats
	What it shows	Where it comes from
Regular snippet	Title, URL and description	Any indexed page
Rich snippet	Extra information, such as stars, price or date	Valid structured data and Google's decision
Featured snippet	A highlighted answer taken from the page text	Google chooses it; there is no markup to request it
Knowledge panel	A box with facts about a person, business or place	Information Google gathers about the entity

Which rich results Google shows in 2026

Google's official gallery, checked in September 2026, lists the types that still produce a special result. The ones that matter most to businesses:

Product: price, availability and reviews.
Review snippet: stars with the average rating, for products, recipes, books, movies, courses and apps.
Article: title and a larger image in news and blog features.
Breadcrumb: the page's path within the site.
Local business: opening hours, reviews and directions, shown in the knowledge panel.
Event, job posting, recipe, video, course and software app: each with its own data.

What happened to FAQ rich results

For years, the most common shortcut to take up more space on Google was marking up frequently asked questions with the FAQPage type, which expanded the questions right below the result. Google announced in May 2026 that this result would stop appearing from May 7 and removed its documentation in June. The step by step type (HowTo) is not in the gallery either.

Both types still exist in the schema.org vocabulary, and marking up a questions section is not forbidden. What ended was the special display on Google. Any guide that still promises extra search space through FAQ markup is out of date.

How to make a page eligible

Even when everything is right, Google does not guarantee the display. The algorithm decides case by case, based on the query, search history, location and device, and sometimes prefers a plain text result.

Pick the type that matches the page's main content: product on a product page, event on the event page.
Use JSON-LD, the format Google recommends in most cases.
Only mark up what visitors can see on the page. Hidden data, or data that differs from the text, breaks the guidelines.
Fill in every required property for the type. Recommended properties help, but a few accurate ones beat many sloppy ones.
Check it in the Rich Results Test before publishing and follow the Search Console reports afterwards.

Review stars: the rule that catches most businesses

A business that publishes reviews about itself on its own site does not get stars in the result. Google only accepts local business and organization reviews when the site collects opinions about other businesses, such as a directory or a comparison site. In a store, the stars come from each product's reviews.

Misleading markup can lead to a manual action. The page loses eligibility for rich results without changing its ranking in regular search, and the notice shows up in Search Console's manual actions report.

Frequently asked questions

What are rich snippets?

Google results that show extra information, such as stars, price, availability or dates, beyond the title, URL and description. Google calls the feature rich results.

Do rich snippets improve rankings?

That is not their job. Markup makes a result eligible for a fuller appearance; ranking still depends on the page's relevance and quality.

Do FAQ rich snippets still work?

No. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results from May 7, 2026, and removed their documentation in June of the same year.

How do I test whether a page has rich snippets?

Use Google's Rich Results Test, which shows the types found and any markup errors, and the rich result reports in Search Console after publishing.

Are rich snippets and featured snippets the same thing?

No. Rich snippets depend on structured data. A featured snippet is an answer Google picks from the page text, and there is no markup to request one.

Related terms

Sources

Rodrigo Fávaro

Founder of ROO3, a marketing and technology agency in São José do Rio Preto, Brazil. Builds AI products running in production (Tobia, gerar.app, Pense Mercado) and maintains the AI Benchmark, a public ranking of AI models.

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