Google publishes general structured data guidelines that apply to every rich result type, plus feature-specific guidelines on each type's page. They cover technical access, content quality, relevance and accuracy. Markup can pass every validator and still be ineligible if it breaks these rules, and serious violations can lead to a manual action.
Key rules
- Markup must describe content visible to users on the page
- Do not mark up irrelevant, misleading or hidden content
- Content must be up to date; for example, no expired events or jobs
- Mark up the most specific applicable type and the main content of the page
- Pages and images in markup must be crawlable, not blocked by robots.txt or noindex
- Follow the spam policies and content policies that apply to Search generally
Quality versus technical guidelines
Technical guidelines are checkable with tools: format, required properties, access. Quality guidelines involve judgment, and Google's tools cannot test them. That is why a page can pass the Rich Results Test and never show a rich result, or lose it later after review.
Making them part of a workflow
Add a short checklist to content and template reviews: is everything in the markup on the page, is it current, does the type match the page? Most problems come from markup that was accurate when written and drifted later.
Example
Markup that outlived the content
Ploughshire's pricing page markup still lists a plan it retired months ago. The validator passes it. A quarterly check against the guidelines catches that the offer is no longer visible, and the team switches the markup to read from the live pricing config.
Common mistakes
Treating validity as compliance
Validators check syntax and properties, not whether the markup is honest and current.
Questions
Google may ignore the markup, make pages ineligible, or apply a manual action for structured data issues.
