When HowTo schema markup first appeared in 2019, every webmaster rushed to add it to their instructional pages. Cooking recipes, smartphone setup guides, car repair tutorials and office software walkthroughs were all displayed in search results as elegant step-by-step blocks, and organic traffic grew noticeably. At sayt.uz we actively recommended this markup to our clients because it produced excellent results for hosting and domain purchase guides.
The August 2024 change and its consequences
The situation shifted dramatically in August 2024. In an official statement Google announced that HowTo rich results would only appear in very limited cases, mostly on desktop search and for a narrow range of topics. The logic mirrored the FAQ schema restriction earlier that year, since Google aimed to simplify the search results page and clear it of spammy markup. Many webmasters lost half of their traffic overnight and hastily removed the schema from their pages.
Based on our observation, HowTo schema is still technically supported in 2026 and Google continues to document it in the structured data reference. However, seeing a rich snippet in regular search results has become almost impossible. For this reason many specialists believe the markup should be removed entirely, but we disagree with that conclusion and explain why below.
AI Overviews and the new role of structured data
Since 2025 AI Overviews have appeared at the top of search results with increasing frequency, and this is precisely where HowTo schema has found a new purpose. One of our clients added a four-step instruction for accessing the hosting control panel with HowTo markup, and we later discovered that his content was repeatedly cited within AI Overviews responses. This was not a rich snippet in the classical sense, but the AI system recognised the page as a reliable source and used it to construct answers for users.
This means HowTo markup is no longer needed for visual decoration of search results, but rather to clearly describe the structure of the page to artificial intelligence systems. Structured data helps AI parse content faster and more accurately, which increases the chance of your site being quoted in AI Overviews and similar summaries. From this perspective HowTo schema has not lost its relevance, but its purpose has clearly shifted.
JSON-LD example and validation
Below is a JSON-LD example for a brief hosting control panel access guide. This code is placed in the page head and validated through the Google Rich Results Test tool.
<script type="application/ld+json">\n{\n "@context": "https://schema.org",\n "@type": "HowTo",\n "name": "Accessing hosting panel",\n "step": [\n {"@type":"HowToStep","name":"Log in to your account"},\n {"@type":"HowToStep","name":"Open the Hosting section"},\n {"@type":"HowToStep","name":"Click the Manage button"},\n {"@type":"HowToStep","name":"Panel opens in a new window"}\n ]\n}\n</script>The biggest mistake and our practical advice
The most common mistake webmasters make is forcibly adding HowTo markup to a page that is not actually a step-by-step guide. If your page is a regular product description or an informational article without a clear sequence of actions, adding HowTo markup leads to a manual penalty from Google. Such cases have been detected much faster since 2024 because Google algorithms became significantly stricter at checking the correspondence between markup and actual page content. For this reason we recommend that clients add HowTo schema only to genuine instructional pages where at least three or four clear steps exist and where each step provides real value to the user.