'Structured data that does not match the page, and the rich results Google retired'

Structured data is the part of a website nobody looks at. It sits in a script tag, a theme or plugin wrote it years ago, and as long as a validator says it parses, everyone assumes it is fine.

Parsing is the lowest bar there is. The two problems worth checking for are markup that says something the page does not, and markup for rich results that no longer exist.

Markup has to describe what a visitor can see

Google's structured data guidelines are plain about this: the markup should describe content that is visible on the page. A LocalBusiness block is meant to restate the name, phone number and address a visitor reads, in a form a machine can parse. It is not a second, hidden version of the business.

In practice the two drift apart all the time, and almost never on purpose:

• The phone number changed. The business moved to a new number, someone updated the header and the contact page, and nobody knew the number was also inside a JSON-LD block in the theme settings.

• The business moved. The address in the footer is new; the street address and postcode in the markup are the old premises.

• The template came with sample data. A theme demo shipped with a placeholder business name and phone number, and the markup kept them long after the visible copy was replaced.

• The name is inconsistent. The page uses the trading name customers know; the markup uses the registered company name from the incorporation documents.

None of these breaks the page. All of them send search engines and answer engines a second, conflicting set of facts about the business. When an assistant is asked for a plumber's phone number, it may well quote the one in the markup.

How to check it by hand

Open the page source and find the application/ld+json blocks, or use Google's Rich Results Test, which lists every item it detected. For each Organization or LocalBusiness item, compare four things with what a visitor sees: the business name, the telephone number, the street address and the postcode.

Compare phone numbers by their digits rather than their formatting. "0113 496 0418", "+44 113 496 0418" and "01134960418" are the same number, and a check that treats them as different will cry wolf on every site.

Where the markup states something the page does not, fix the markup, not the page. The visible content is what the business has already told its customers.

Rich results that no longer exist

Google has retired or restricted several rich-result types, and plenty of sites still carry the markup for them:

• HowTo rich results were retired in September 2023.

• FAQPage rich results have only been shown for well-known government and health sites since August 2023. A local business's FAQ markup no longer earns the expanded result it was added for.

• ClaimReview and SpecialAnnouncement were phased out of Google Search results in 2025.

Leaving this markup in place does not hurt the site's rankings. Google simply ignores it. But it is worth knowing about for two reasons. It tells you nobody has reviewed the markup since it was added, which is usually a sign the rest of it needs a look too. And it means a feature somebody once sold the business as a search advantage has quietly stopped doing anything, which is the kind of thing an owner would rather hear from you than discover.

Whether to remove it is a judgement call. Valid FAQ markup is still a clean, machine-readable statement of the questions on the page, which other engines may read. HowTo markup on a page that is not a step-by-step guide should go.

Why this matters more now

Answer engines lean on structured data to work out what a business is, where it is and how to reach it. A business with clean, consistent markup is easier to describe correctly. One whose markup contradicts its own page is giving the assistant two answers and hoping it picks the right one. Our AI visibility audit guide covers the rest of what makes a site quotable, and the local SEO audit guide covers keeping the same facts consistent across the Google listing and the website.

How SiteAssay checks it

Every SiteAssay audit reads the structured data on the home page and compares the Organization, LocalBusiness and Product items against what the page visibly says: the business name, the telephone number by its last nine digits, the street address and the postcode. A value only the markup states is reported as a finding, with the property that disagrees, so the owner knows exactly which line to correct. Markup with none of those properties is treated as nothing to compare, not as a pass.

The same audit lists any markup for rich-result types Google has retired, separately from the types that still earn a result. Both are listed with their rules among every check the audit runs, and the website audits page covers the rest. To see what a site's markup says about it, run a free website audit.