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

Once you’ve got JSON-LD for SEO on your Shopify store, you’re probably wondering when your store will show up differently in the search results or how will may change over time?

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 when structured data is added or updated.

Trust the process

1. 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.

2. Google begins their analysis

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

Usually, this is done on a page-by-page basis over the next week or two.

3. First Rich Results appear

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

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

4. The disappearing act

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

Don’t panic if this happens

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

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.

5. The launch

After some time of no Rich Results, they’ll slowly start to come back over the next month(s).

At this point Google will attempt to show any page you have with its Rich Result to most searches. Some searches and some pages may not show depending on Google’s algorithm.

6. The disappearing act part two

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

Check the troubleshooting ideas below for some ideas.

Troubleshooting ideas

• 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.
• Run your URL through the Rich Results Testing Tool or Schema Markup Validator to ensure the structured data is present and accurate. The Rich Results Testing Tool only shows data in which you can qualify for Rich Results. To see all your structured data, run it through the Schema Markup Validator.
• If you have product reviews and we integrate with your review provider, turn their SEO Rich Snippets settings off or remove your theme provided markup. I've found over time that Google does better with only one set of aggregateRating data.
  
• 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.
• Double check the pages you expect to see in search results are not blocked by a noindex tag or robots.txt files. 
  
• 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.
  

Think long-term

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

On average, customers begin to see Rich Results around 34 days though it varies for every store. Additionally, 97% of stores see results within the first 6 months.

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 Results 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 we've have seen but a) it could change at any time and b) your site may be different.

We also want to consider how long Rich Results stick around. That's why we include the ongoing monitoring for JSON-LD for SEO customers on the Annual Plan.

Anecdotally, stores that have JSON-LD for SEO enabled and are steady (meaning their URLs are consistently available to Google) have found the most success over time.

More specifically, when I look at stores that have had the app for 2+ years, I know their Rich Results will still be there because Google likes consistency and stability when awarding Rich Results.