How to Test Your Structured Data With Google’s Rich Results Test

Structured data — code added to your web pages that helps search engines understand your content — can unlock rich results in Google Search: star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, event listings, product prices, and more. But only if it’s implemented correctly.

Google’s Rich Results Test is a free tool that lets you check whether your structured data is valid and eligible for rich results. This guide walks you through how to use it, what the results mean, and how to fix common errors.

How to Run a Rich Results Test

Go to search.google.com/test/rich-results and enter either a URL from your live site or paste in raw HTML code. The URL method is simpler and tests the page as Google actually sees it; the code method is useful when testing changes before they go live.

Click ‘Test URL’ or ‘Test code’ and wait a few seconds for the tool to crawl and analyse the page. Results are split into two sections: detected structured data types (e.g. Article, FAQPage, Product) and whether each is eligible for rich results or contains errors.

The tool renders the page using a headless browser, so JavaScript-generated structured data is also tested — important if you’re using a CMS that injects schema via script tags rather than directly in the HTML.

Understanding the Results

Each detected structured data item is shown with a status: ‘Valid’, ‘Valid with warnings’, or ‘Invalid’. Valid items are eligible for rich results (though Google doesn’t guarantee it will show them). Warnings indicate non-critical missing fields that could improve your rich result display. Invalid items have errors that must be fixed before they’re eligible.

Click on any detected item to expand the details. You’ll see which properties were found, which are missing, and the exact error messages for anything flagged. Errors typically relate to missing required fields (e.g. a Product schema without a ‘name’ or ‘offers’ property) or incorrectly formatted values (e.g. a date in the wrong format).

The tool also shows a preview of how the rich result might appear in search — though the actual display in live search can vary based on Google’s editorial decisions and the user’s search context.

Fixing Common Structured Data Errors

Missing required properties are the most common issue. Refer to Google’s schema documentation (developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data) for each type to see which fields are mandatory. For FAQPage schema, every question must have an ‘acceptedAnswer’ with a valid ‘text’ field, for instance.

Date format errors are also frequent. Google expects ISO 8601 format (e.g. 2024-09-15 or 2024-09-15T14:30:00+01:00). Dates written as ‘15 September 2024’ will fail validation.

After fixing errors in your CMS or code, re-run the test to confirm the issues are resolved. Once the page is live and error-free, you can request indexing via Google Search Console to prompt Google to re-crawl the updated page more quickly.