Google Completely Removes How to Rich Results for Desktop Search

As we all know on 08th August 2023 Google Announced that they would be downgrading the visibility of How-to and FAQ-rich results. In order to reduce the complexities of search results from August onwards google has implemented restrictions in FAQ-rich results and it limits the FAQ-structured data for well-known, authoritative government and health-related websites. Meantime Google has fully removed the How-to rich results from mobile search but now Google has announced that How-to rich results have been completely removed from both mobile and desktop searches.

These changes have been made due to the continuous effort to simplify the search results pages, so they officially announced on September 14th 2023 that;

“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.”

Snapshot of before and after limitation on FAQ rich results;

Moreover Google stated that;

“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. 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. To allow time for adjusting your API calls, support for How-to in the Search Console API will be removed in 180 days.”