Glossary Rich Snippet

What Is a Rich Snippet?

CEO & Digital Strategist

8 min reviewed on 2026-08-08

SEO Técnico

Definition

A rich snippet is a Google search result that shows extra visual elements beyond the title and URL, such as a star rating, price, or an FAQ dropdown, triggered by valid structured data on the page.

A cardboard box fitted with brass corners and a leather strap — beside the title Rich Snippet — The same cardboard box, only with brass corners and a strap

On this page 6

What is a rich snippet?
Rich snippet vs. featured snippet
How it works
Why it matters
Best practices
Common mistakes

In brief

Which rich result types are still active on Google in 2026, why a rich snippet doesn't change rankings but can significantly boost CTR, and what happened to the FAQ dropdown after its removal in May 2026.

What is a rich snippet?

A rich snippet is an expanded version of a normal Google search result: instead of just a title, URL and meta description, the listing adds visual elements that take up more space and show more information at a glance. A recipe card with a photo and cook time, a product with star ratings and price, or a breadcrumb path instead of the full URL are common examples.

The SEO industry coined the term more than a decade ago, and it's still what most people search for on Google. Google's own current documentation barely uses that word anymore: it officially talks about rich results. In practice both terms point to the same thing, the visual element that shows up when the markup is correct, and this glossary uses "rich snippet" because that's the name the industry actually searches for.

That markup is the page's structured data, almost always in JSON-LD format, and it's part of the regular work of technical SEO: checking that the code labels every content type correctly.

Rich snippet vs. featured snippet

Element	What it is	Who controls it
Rich snippet	A site's own result, expanded with stars, price, FAQ or a breadcrumb path, triggered by structured data	The site owner, through its own markup
Featured snippet	A highlighted box at the top of results, with an answer pulled from someone else's content	Google decides which excerpt to pull; the site can't trigger it with its own markup

The two get confused constantly because both take up more space than a normal result. The real difference is control: a rich snippet depends on code the site itself publishes, while a featured snippet depends on Google choosing to extract a passage from that page to answer a question directly, with no markup that requests it.

How it works

The process starts with the markup. The page includes structured data, almost always a JSON-LD block in the <head>, tagging each element with its exact type from Schema.org's vocabulary: Recipe for a recipe, Product for a product listing, Event for an event. Google reads that code during crawling, alongside the rest of the HTML.

Correct markup makes a page eligible, not automatically visible. Google checks the markup against the visible content and then decides case by case whether to show the visual element, depending on the type of search, the device, or even policy changes Google rolls out over time. Two pages with identically clean markup can get different treatment without any technical error involved.

To check whether the code is well-formed, Google offers the Rich Results Test, a free tool at search.google.com/test/rich-results that analyzes a URL or a code snippet and shows which types it detects and which properties are missing. It doesn't replace Search Console, which also warns when a template stops generating correct markup after a design change.

The catalog of supported types isn't fixed: Google revises it often. In 2023 it dropped the HowTo rich result entirely, and in May 2026 it did the same with the FAQ dropdown, which had previously been limited to a small group of government and health sites.

Why it matters

Precision matters here, because this is the point people get wrong most often: a rich snippet is not a ranking factor. The result's position in the list doesn't change based on whether the markup is there, something Google states explicitly in its own guidelines.

What it does is compete better for attention within that same position. A result with stars, price, or a breadcrumb path takes up more screen space and communicates more information before the click, and that usually translates into a higher click-through rate (CTR) than a result without markup in the same spot. The effect resembles other technical signals: Core Web Vitals don't move rankings on their own either, but they shape how the page is experienced once someone opens it.

Keeping that markup current is ongoing work, not a one-time task. A redesign, a template change, or a migration can break the structured data without anyone noticing until the rich snippet disappears from results weeks later.

Best practices

Only markup what users can actually see on the page; never invent a rating, price, or date that isn't shown on screen.
Use JSON-LD as the default format and check every new template with the Rich Results Test before it goes live, not after.
Always pick the most specific Schema.org type available (Recipe rather than a generic CreativeWork) to take advantage of its properties.
If your page has a navigation path, mark it up as a breadcrumb: one of the more stable types in results, without the restrictions other types have faced.
Check Search Console's reports by result type after every template change or migration, not only once you notice a traffic drop.
Don't confuse eligibility with a guarantee: prepare the page so it can show up, but don't promise a client the rich snippet will actually appear.

Common mistakes

Still investing in FAQPage markup expecting the dropdown to show in search results, when Google shut it down for every site in May 2026.
Publishing an average rating (aggregateRating) on a company's own page about its own products, something Google has excluded as a self-serving review since 2019.
Leaving an old template's structured data unupdated after a redesign, so the code is still there but out of sync with the visible content.
Assuming valid markup guarantees the rich result, when Google decides case by case whether to show it.
Stacking several Schema.org types that don't fit the actual content, just to try to trigger more visual elements.

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Frequently asked

Are rich snippet and rich result the same thing?

In practice, yes. Rich snippet is the term the SEO industry coined more than a decade ago, and it's still what most people search for on Google. Google's official documentation now uses "rich result" almost exclusively, but both refer to the same visual element in a search result.

Does a rich snippet improve Google rankings?

Not directly. Google confirms in its own guidelines that markup doesn't change a result's position in standard rankings. What it can do is raise CTR, because the result takes up more screen space and shows more information before the click.

How do I check if my page is eligible for a rich snippet?

With the Rich Results Test, Google's free tool at search.google.com/test/rich-results. Paste in the URL or the code, and it shows which types it detects and which properties are missing. Search Console adds reports that warn when a template stops producing markup after a change.

What happened to the FAQ rich snippet?

Google restricted it in August 2023 to a small group of government and health sites, then removed it entirely in May 2026, for every site. FAQPage markup is still valid as structured data, but it no longer triggers any visual element on Google.

What's the difference between a rich snippet and a featured snippet?

A rich snippet is triggered by the site itself through its own markup: stars, price, breadcrumb. A featured snippet is built by Google from a passage of someone else's content to answer a question directly, with no markup involved in requesting it.