When should your store's Rich Snippets appear in Google?

Once you’ve setup your Shopify store’s JSON-LD, you’re probably wondering when your store will show up differently in the search results.

How long this takes is vague and cloaked in mystery. This is mostly because it depends on how much trust your site has but also because Google doesn’t want people to game the search results.

Some sites have been able to deduce how parts of this works and how long it takes but it’s going to be different for every site. Google’s existing trust in your site is a big factor.

There are a few steps your site’s going to go through.

1. Adding structured markup to your site

The first step is adding structured markup to your site.

You can search for how to set this up (it can be a pain) or you can install JSON-LD for SEO which will do this for you automatically.

2. Google crawls your site and finds the structured markup

As Google crawls your site it will notice your structured markup.

They don’t do anything with your structured markup just yet, besides noting that it’s there.

3. Google begins their analysis

After crawling your site and seeing the structured markup in place, they will begin their analysis of your structured data.

It sounds like they do this on a page-by-page basis over the next week or two.

4. First Rich Snippets appear

Slowly, some pages will start showing up in some search results with Rich Snippets.

Some searches won’t show the Rich Snippet, while others will. It all depends on the page’s trust, quality, and individual search.

5. The disappearing act

After a few days your site may lose some or all of their Rich Snippets.

Don’t panic if this happens

This seems like a normal part of Google re-adjusting the search results for your Rich Snippets.

It’s important to not change your structured data format during this time or you might delay the final result. You can create new pages, update pages, and update the data inside of your structured data. But you shouldn’t change the format of them.

6. The launch

After a few days of no Rich Snippets, they’ll slowly start to come back over the next months.

At this point you should have what is called "semi-permanent" Rich Snippets. Google will attempt to show any page you have with its Rich Snippet to most searches. Some searches and some pages may not show depending on Google’s algorithm.

7. The disappearing act part two

If you've had JSON-LD for SEO for a while and your noticing that your Rich Snippets are not showing up in search results, or they've disappeared suddenly, this could be for a few reasons.

Google's algorithm changes constantly. Even when you've made no changes at all to your store, it's possible that an algorithm update impacted your site.

Theme changes can absolutely impact your results and SEO for better or for worse. This may be unavoidable as theme updates are going to happen. Give Google time to reanalyze your site.

Check to make sure you have the app enabled in your Shopify theme. When you publish a brand new theme, your theme settings don't transfer over so you may need to check this each time you publish a new theme.

Think long-term

When you put it all together, it could take a few months before your site is consistently showing Rich Snippets. Some stores will see solid results after a month, others will see them in the first week, and then others take months.

For my Plus+ customers where I monitor their stores and give recommendations, it takes 34 days on average to see Rich Results appearing. Though it varies there too.

To err on the safe side, wait about 2-3 months.

That sounds like a long-time but if you think about it, it makes sense:

• Google wants to show pages that are the most valuable to their searches.
• Having Structured Data on your site is a way to help Google discover your valuable page content.
• Rich Snippets is a way for Google to promote your best content for you, in a structured way.

The timeline for anything Google does with their search is a closely guarded secret. The above estimates are based on what people have seen but a) it could change at any time and b) your site may be different.