Between June and November 2025, Google officially retired support for 7 structured data types, according to announcements on the Google Search Central Blog and an analysis published by WebFX on March 18, 2026. The affected schema types — CourseInfo, ClaimReview, EstimatedSalary, LearningVideo, SpecialAnnouncement, VehicleListing, and PracticeProblem — no longer generate rich results in Google Search.
This decision is part of a clear trend: Google is progressively simplifying its search results pages. Fewer visual features, fewer supported schema types — and a growing focus on raw content quality over markup.
Which Schema Types Are Gone?
In June 2025, Google announced the removal of six rich result types via the Search Central Blog:
- CourseInfo — structured course listings with provider and duration
- ClaimReview — fact-checking structured markup
- EstimatedSalary — salary range features in job search results
- LearningVideo — enriched educational video clips
- SpecialAnnouncement — emergency announcements (a Covid-era holdover)
- VehicleListing — structured vehicle listings
In November 2025, a seventh type was added: PracticeProblem, used for interactive educational exercises. Google also removed the associated search features: Nutrition Information, Nearby Offers and Events, Local Bikeshare Station Status, and TV Season Selector.
Why Is Google Doing This?
The official reason is "simplification of search results." The reality is more nuanced. These schema types shared two common problems: low real-world adoption and limited value for end users.
ClaimReview, for instance, was heavily misused — sites applied it to any opinion article to simulate "fact-checking." VehicleListing and EstimatedSalary generated rich snippets that simply duplicated what sites already displayed visually.
More fundamentally, Google is investing heavily in its AI Overviews systems to answer user questions directly. In this context, classic rich results lose relevance: why display a structured snippet when a generated answer can synthesize the information?
What This Actually Means for Businesses
If you weren't using these 7 schema types, the impact is zero. If you were:
- No penalty — Google simply ignores these tags, it does not penalize their presence
- Time to audit — identify these schemas in your codebase and clean them up properly
- Focus on what still works — FAQ, HowTo, Product, LocalBusiness, Article/NewsArticle, Review, Event
The real issue isn't technical. It's strategic. These removals confirm that the SEO battle is shifting toward content quality and AI Overview citations, not rich snippet optimization. What matters to get cited by ChatGPT or Perplexity isn't your JSON-LD — it's your topical E-E-A-T authority and the information density of your articles.
What to do right now: Audit your schema implementations with Google's Rich Results Test. Remove the retired types. Strengthen the still-active types: FAQ, Product, LocalBusiness, Review. And focus your energy on content that meets E-E-A-T criteria — Expertise, Experience, Authority, Trust. Strong internal linking completes the strategy by distributing PageRank to your key pages.
Cicero's Take
Google is cleaning house. That's healthy. Years of "schema gaming" had polluted the SERPs with useless rich snippets. What remains — FAQ, Product, LocalBusiness, Review — is what genuinely adds value for users. Put your energy there, not into what just got retired.
Growth and SEO content strategy specialist, I founded Cicéro to help businesses build lasting organic visibility — on Google and in AI-generated answers. Every piece of content we produce is designed to convert, not just to exist.
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