A year after the initial support for How-To Schema rich results on mobile, we’re now seeing the same being reflected on desktop.
The first sighting of the new device treatment support was by Saijo George earlier this week through his TL;DR Marketing Newsletter account.
And now Aleyda Solis has shared that she is seeing the treatment reflected on her own personal site, showing that emojis are also supported (can check out the implementation here).
My hreflang implementation guide How-to snippets in desktop results 🤓 pic.twitter.com/rV5hHOhgMu
— Aleyda Solis (@aleyda) May 26, 2020
Brian Freiesleben has pointed out in this post that there appears to be a couple of different versions that Google is testing on desktop. If we compare this against the existing mobile versions, we can see some similarities there.
Here’s the other 4 variations I’ve seen. Incl. the one @type_SEO spotted last week, which looks similar to the latest edition, but slightly different. pic.twitter.com/uzhjyHw9Bm
— Brodie Clark (@brodieseo) April 26, 2020
Earlier this year I shared that I thought it was a pity that How-To Schema hadn’t caught on in the same way that FAQ Schema has. Mentioning that the mobile-only constraint made it hard to justify.
I believe the treatment being visible on desktop is still just a test at this stage. I’m seeing it on my end in an incognito window, but there isn’t a great deal of consistency of it’s appearance.
One thing that’s interesting to note is how the treatment appears on desktop. Izzi Smith and I discussed this last year when the roll out first happened on mobile. If we saw this same mobile treatment on desktop, that could be a bit intense.
It’s important to note that Google haven’t updated their official documentation about the device availability for the feature yet:
Lizzi Harvey manages a lot of this documentation and is quick to make updates (can track them here), so keep an eye out for the official confirmation from the big G.
I’ve previously complained about how spammed FAQ Schema has become, but I don’t think support for that Schema type is going anywhere. Same goes for How-To Schema – uptake is only going to increase from here.
But remember that Google puts in place filtering parameters for FAQ Schema where they will only show a maximum of 3 results on the first page only, along with other filtering parameters.
I believe the same applies to How-To Rich Results. You should only see a maximum of 3 results on the first page. I haven’t dug deep into other filters yet, so that could be worth a closer look.
Update: this original test lasted for 16 days (May 20th – June 4th) then stopped for a short amount of time. I’m now seeing it start up again with a slightly different variation, using images as a snippet preview:
The How-To Schema desktop rich result test is back. And with a new look. Google were originally testing a similar treatment for 16 days, then they had a break. Now back with a slightly different variation (image previews). pic.twitter.com/KxdZsz2HdE
— Brodie Clark (@brodieseo) June 22, 2020
Update: Google has again started testing How-To Schema rich results on desktop as of October 13th. This was spotted by Brian Freiesleben on Twitter:
Spotted Google testing How-to rich results on desktop again today. Anyone else seeing this? https://t.co/8o8mskpGUC pic.twitter.com/3iBcCSU1Sq
— Brian Freiesleben (@type_SEO) October 14, 2020