Structured data that still earns rich results for European sites

Structured data went through a cull in 2023. In August that year Google limited FAQ rich results to well-known, authoritative government and health websites, and it wound down HowTo rich results altogether, first on mobile and then on desktop. Many of the sites I audit across Europe still carry FAQ and HowTo markup from that era, and their owners are often surprised to hear it no longer produces those expanding results for them.

That doesn't mean schema is dead. It means you should spend your effort on the types that still pay off, and implement them properly. Google has continued to trim lesser-used features since then, so check its documentation before building anything new.

What still earns its keep

For most small and medium European businesses, I focus on five types.

• Product (with Offer): price, currency, availability and, where relevant, shipping and returns.
• Review snippets: star ratings, but only under Google's rules (more below).
• LocalBusiness: name, address, phone, opening hours, coordinates.
• BreadcrumbList: tells Google how your pages fit together.
• Article: headline, dates, author and images for blog and news content.

Organization markup on the homepage, with your logo and official profiles, is a sensible extra.

Product markup for European shops

If you sell online, Product markup is where rich results are still very much alive: price, availability and ratings can all appear in search and in shopping-style listings. A few European specifics trip people up:

1. Use the right priceCurrency for each market, whether EUR, GBP, SEK or PLN, and make sure the marked-up price matches what the shopper sees, including VAT.
2. If you run separate country sites, each one should mark up its own price, not a copy of the Irish or German one.
3. Add shipping details and a merchant return policy where you can. With the EU's 14-day withdrawal right for most online purchases, a clear returns policy is something buyers look for anyway.

Keep the markup generated from the same data as the visible page. Hand-written JSON that drifts out of sync with your real prices is worse than none.

The review snippet rules

This is where I see the most mistakes. Google does not show star ratings for reviews that a business collects about itself and marks up on its own LocalBusiness or Organization pages. These are called self-serving reviews, and they have been ineligible since 2019. Star ratings on individual product pages are a different matter and are still fine, provided the reviews are genuine and visible on the page.

Mark up what a visitor can actually see, or don't mark it up at all.

Never mark up reviews copied from Google or Trustpilot, and never invent an aggregate rating. At best it is ignored; at worst it earns a manual action.

LocalBusiness and breadcrumbs

LocalBusiness markup won't produce a flashy result on its own, but it reinforces your details alongside your Business Profile. For businesses with branches in several countries, give each location its own page and its own markup, with the local address format and an international phone number.

Breadcrumb markup has become less visible on mobile, where Google tends to show just the site name and domain, but it still helps Google understand your structure and still displays on desktop. It is cheap to add and rarely goes wrong.

Article markup and multilingual sites

For blogs and news pages, Article markup with accurate datePublished and dateModified, a real author and a good image helps Google present your content properly. On multilingual sites, set inLanguage on each version and pair it with correct hreflang tags. Structured data doesn't replace hreflang; it sits alongside it.

Test, then monitor

Run your key templates through Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator, then keep an eye on the enhancement reports in Search Console. Plugin and theme updates can silently break markup, and nobody notices until the stars disappear.

If you'd like a second pair of eyes, my €29 SEO report includes a structured data review, and you can see how I work with businesses across the continent on my European SEO page.