The How-To rich results are officially deprecated.
“Continuing our efforts to simplify Google’s search results, we’re extending the How-to change to desktop as well. As of September 13, Google Search no longer shows How-to rich results on desktop, which means this result type is now deprecated.
The How-To rich results relied on the HowTo Schema structured data in order to make a webpage eligible for appearing in a rich result.
To allow time for adjusting your API calls, support for How-to in the Search Console API will be removed in 180 days.”
Since How-to results no longer appear in Google Search, we will be dropping the How-to search appearance, rich result report, and support in the Rich results test in 30 days.
Google announced:
There was no indication that Google intended to remove the how-to rich results from the desktop.
As usual for structured data, the structured data only makes a webpage eligible to show up as a rich result, it doesn’t ensure that it will.
In this case, the structured data will have no effect or benefit for publishers who continue to use the how-to markup.
Google previously removed the How-To rich results only from mobile search, reducing it’s visibility so that it only appeared on the desktop.
That has now changed.
Google has completely removed the rich results from the desktop versions of the search results pages.
This structured data previously shown in all languages and countries where Google Search was available.
Screenshot of How-To Rich Result
Google announced that they have completely removed the How-To Rich Results. The schema for it can still be used but there will be no benefit in the search results from using it.
The reason given for removing the How-To rich results is that this is a part of simplifying the search results pages.
How-To Rich Results
This change will be visible in the metrics for the How-to search appearance in the performance report, and in the number of impressions reported in the How-to enhancement reports.
Read Google’s official announcement:
Changes to HowTo and FAQ rich resultsFeatured image by author/Logo by Google