Knowledge base v2.13.0 · Community edition · data through 2 October 2026
Topic · Serving and ranking
Day 1 only told attendees to check and focus on rich results; Day 2 supplied the detail: structured data makes pages eligible for rich results such as review stars and recipe filters, which Google says can bring more qualified visitors. Google pointed to case studies on its developer site, including a May 2018 one in which Rakuten Recipes got 2.7 times more search traffic and 1.5 times longer sessions after adding recipe markup; the speaker called it old but expects the link to hold. The Search gallery shows the supported features, from broad page-level types (breadcrumbs, article) to vertical ones (recipes, events, products), and the Rich Results Test shows which features a page triggers and whether its markup is valid. Features come and go: Google removed several little-used ones in 2025, and a structured data manual action removes rich result eligibility without affecting web ranking. Google's generative AI guide names rich result eligibility as a reason to keep using structured data, which AI features do not require. Day 3 placed rich results in serving: Google builds search features as the last step after ranking, most of them from what it extracted during indexing, while rich results rely on extra data from the site owner, usually JSON-LD structured data; AI Overviews and AI Mode are standard search features, not rich results, and need no structured data. Google highlighted review snippets (star ratings, which it called a powerful trust signal for users, said at the event; self-serving reviews of a site's own business are not eligible), product rich results, which it called essential for e-commerce, and Article markup, highly recommended though not required for Top Stories, which can also mark paywalled content. The site name is an attribution feature that owners can influence, and Google said it may never use structured data from a site it does not trust. A Day 1 community demo treated warnings in Google's structured-data test as non-critical, which matches Search Console Help: critical issues make an item invalid for rich results, while non-critical ones only limit its appearance. Google's Rich Results Test help says the tool tests either a page's full URL or a pasted code snippet, and that all page resources must be reachable by an anonymous user, so pages behind a firewall or a password need the code mode or must be exposed, for example through a tunnel; a Day 1 community demo used both modes.
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A community demo treated warnings in Google's structured-data test as not critical, in an example result of 22 items with two errors and two warnings.
Speaker not identifiedIn Day 1, 13:10 · Lightning session A: Automation and AIEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-11
A community demo's script used both input modes of Google's Rich Results Test: the URL mode for public pages, which Google fetches itself, and the code mode, into which the script pasted the page's HTML, for private pages and pages Google cannot fetch (best reading of a largely unintelligible recording; the second kind of page was heard as 'dead', possibly 'dev').
Speaker not identifiedIn Day 1, 13:10 · Lightning session A: Automation and AIEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-11
In a community demo, the structured-data problems Google's Rich Results Test reported on the test page included an empty name, a breadcrumb problem and a price of zero, with errors shown in pink and warnings in orange (best readings of a largely unintelligible recording; each item is heard in only one of the two recordings).
Speaker not identifiedIn Day 1, 13:10 · Lightning session A: Automation and AIEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-08
Check and focus on rich results for Google.
In Day 1 · session not recordedEvidence notes
Search Console Help separates critical issues, which make a structured-data item invalid and stop it from appearing as a rich result, from non-critical issues, listed under 'Improve item appearance'; the Rich Results Test reports valid items that have warnings.
Publisher Google Search Console HelpAnnotates Day 1, 13:10 · Lightning session A: Automation and AI
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-11
Google's Rich Results Test help says the tool tests either a page's full URL or a pasted code snippet (Code instead of URL); all page resources must be reachable by an anonymous user on the internet, so resources behind a firewall or a password are not available to the test unless exposed, for example through a tunnel.
Publisher Google Search Console HelpAnnotates Day 1, 13:10 · Lightning session A: Automation and AI
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-11glossary term Rich Results Test
A Google case study shown on stage (published May 2018) reported that Rakuten Recipes got 2.7 times more traffic from search engines and a 1.5 times increase in session duration after implementing recipe structured data.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence slide photo, transcript
Google recommends using the Search gallery in its developer documentation to find the structured data features that suit a site; the gallery shows each feature and how Google uses the markup.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence slide photo, transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-03
Google recommends testing and previewing structured data in the Rich Results Test, which shows the rich result features it detected and whether the markup is valid.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence slide photo, transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-11glossary term Rich Results Test
Structured data turns the loosely structured web into structured information that powers visual search features such as review stars and recipe filters (for example by preparation time).
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Used byglossary term Rich results
Structured data can bring more qualified traffic, because the site can be shown in new, more interesting ways to more people, who are then more likely to click.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Google's developer site has a number of case studies that show traffic and session-duration gains from structured data.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Google's structured data types fall roughly into two groups: broad page-level types such as breadcrumbs and article, and vertical-specific types such as recipes, events and products.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Structured data makes pages eligible to appear as rich results, Google's structured data talk said in its recap.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Used byglossary terms Rich results, Structured data
Google keeps adding structured data features and recommendations but also removes them: in the previous year (2025) it removed several features that brought little benefit and were little used.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-03
Google's general structured data guidelines say a structured data manual action removes a page's eligibility for rich results but does not affect how the page ranks in web search.
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-02
Google's rich results slide said Article structured data is not required to appear in Top Stories but is highly recommended for all articles.
“Not required for "Top Stories," but highly recommended for all articles.”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are bornEvidence slide photo, transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-13
Google's Article rich results slide said structured data can be used to indicate that content is behind a paywall.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are bornEvidence slide photo
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-13
Compared with the simple early-2000s Google results page, which showed a few expected sites, today's results page for the same query adds exploration features such as People Also Ask.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 12:00 · What are quality updatesEvidence transcript
Google generates search features as the last serving step: it sends the query to the index, gets results back, ranks them and then builds the search features.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are bornEvidence transcript, slide photo
Used byglossary term Search features
Most of Google's search features need nothing extra from the site owner; Google generates them from what it extracted from the page during indexing.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are bornEvidence transcript
Used byglossary term Search features
Rich results differ from other search features because Google builds them from extra data that site owners provide, usually structured data and usually in JSON-LD format.
“The magic behind rich results is usually structured data. Emphasis on "usually".”
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are bornEvidence transcript
Used byglossary terms Rich results, Search features
AI Mode and AI Overviews are not rich results but standard search features: they need no structured data to function and work with the normal text results from Google's index.
“AI Mode and AI Overviews are not rich results.”
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are bornEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-02glossary terms Rich results, Search features
Google's structured data feature guide lists the kinds of structured data Google supports with a search feature and what each can do to a site's search results.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are bornEvidence transcript
Article structured data is a broad type with many properties and nested types, which Google uses to learn more about published content, such as its headline, author and publication date.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are bornEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-13
Google described the site name as an attribution feature rather than a rich result, and said site owners can influence which site name Google shows for their site in search results.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are bornEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-15glossary term Site name
Review structured data lets a site specify how its users rated something; the review snippet shows an average star rating and often the number of reviews of a product, service or piece of content.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are bornEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-14glossary term Review snippet
Google said users rely quite a bit on review stars, calling them a powerful signal of quality and trust for users and a way for sites to use social proof to increase clicks.
“Those little yellow stars are a powerful signal of quality and trust for our users.”
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are bornEvidence transcript
Review snippets can be used for many kinds of things, from products to local businesses, movies and books.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are bornEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-14
Some countries rely a lot on social proof such as reviews, Google's speaker said, recalling a point from Google's Day 2 internationalisation talk.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are bornEvidence transcript
Google called product rich results essential for any e-commerce business; they can show the product's rating, the number of reviews and other details.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are bornEvidence transcript
Google may never use structured data from a site it does not trust: once it sees markup it does not trust, it does not touch it.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 15:45 · How long does it take to..?Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-02
Google's Visual Elements gallery describes a text result as based on the page's textual content, with attribution, title link and snippet; attribution can include the site name, favicon and visible URL, and a rich result typically relies on structured data.
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are born
Google's Article documentation says there is no markup requirement to be eligible for Google News features like Top stories, and that Article markup can tell Google more explicitly that content is a news article, who the author is and what the title is.
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are born
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-13
Google's review snippet documentation supports ratings for local businesses and organizations only on sites that capture reviews about other businesses; self-serving reviews of a site's own business are not eligible.
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 3, 13:25 · How Search results are born
Used byrequirement DEV-SDA-14glossary term Review snippet
A community demo's script used both input modes of Google's Rich Results Test: the URL mode for public pages, which Google fetches itself, and the code mode, into which the script pasted the page's HTML, for private pages and pages Google cannot fetch (best reading of a largely unintelligible recording; the second kind of page was heard as 'dead', possibly 'dev').
A community demo showed a script that opens Chrome with a saved session, pastes a URL into Google's Rich Results Test, waits about 15 seconds, then screenshots and saves the result and retries on failure (the demo's recording is largely unintelligible; the tool name is a best reading).
In a community demo, the structured-data problems Google's Rich Results Test reported on the test page included an empty name, a breadcrumb problem and a price of zero, with errors shown in pink and warnings in orange (best readings of a largely unintelligible recording; each item is heard in only one of the two recordings).
A community demo treated warnings in Google's structured-data test as not critical, in an example result of 22 items with two errors and two warnings.
Google's Rich Results Test help says the tool tests either a page's full URL or a pasted code snippet (Code instead of URL); all page resources must be reachable by an anonymous user on the internet, so resources behind a firewall or a password are not available to the test unless exposed, for example through a tunnel.
A community demo showed a script that opens Chrome with a saved session, pastes a URL into Google's Rich Results Test, waits about 15 seconds, then screenshots and saves the result and retries on failure (the demo's recording is largely unintelligible; the tool name is a best reading).
Structured data makes pages eligible to appear as rich results, Google's structured data talk said in its recap.
Most of Google's search features need nothing extra from the site owner; Google generates them from what it extracted from the page during indexing.
The 'gold nuggets' that Google's feature extraction step pulls out of a page's HTML are structured data (such as JSON-LD), images and videos.
Rich results differ from other search features because Google builds them from extra data that site owners provide, usually structured data and usually in JSON-LD format.
Structured data makes pages eligible to appear as rich results, Google's structured data talk said in its recap.
AI Mode and AI Overviews are not rich results but standard search features: they need no structured data to function and work with the normal text results from Google's index.
AI Overviews and AI Mode use the same index structures and token-based snippets as classic web results, a point Google called important but not obvious.
Review structured data lets a site specify how its users rated something; the review snippet shows an average star rating and often the number of reviews of a product, service or piece of content.
Structured data turns the loosely structured web into structured information that powers visual search features such as review stars and recipe filters (for example by preparation time).
Some countries rely a lot on social proof such as reviews, Google's speaker said, recalling a point from Google's Day 2 internationalisation talk.
According to consumer data shown on a slide in the talk (source not captured), US consumers judge product quality more by user feedback and reviews, while European shoppers seem to look more at brand reputation.
Google may never use structured data from a site it does not trust: once it sees markup it does not trust, it does not touch it.
Structured data that is not relevant to the page's content can be treated as abusive: Google's filters make it ineffective, and egregious cases can lead to a manual action.
Google's structured data feature guide lists the kinds of structured data Google supports with a search feature and what each can do to a site's search results.
Google recommends using the Search gallery in its developer documentation to find the structured data features that suit a site; the gallery shows each feature and how Google uses the markup.
Validate markup in the Rich Results Test before it reaches templates, and monitor it after release
Rests on 8 claims, 5 of them in this topic
Add Article markup with headline, images, dates and authors to every article template
Rests on 5 claims, 4 of them in this topic
Do not mark up self-serving review ratings of your own business
Rests on 3 claims, 3 of them in this topic
Mark up only content that is visible on the page and relevant to it
Rests on 5 claims, 2 of them in this topic
Choose the specific types Google documents for its features, and skip generic or irrelevant ones
Rests on 7 claims, 2 of them in this topic
Spend no effort on llms.txt, AI text files or AI-specific markup for Google
Rests on 15 claims, 1 of them in this topic
Mark up merchant listings completely, with validity dates for sale prices
Rests on 7 claims, 1 of them in this topic
State the preferred site name with WebSite markup on the home page
Rests on 2 claims, 1 of them in this topic