What rich snippets are
A standard search result shows a title, a URL and a description. A rich snippet adds information pulled from the page's structured data: review stars, a product's price and stock status, recipe cooking time, event dates or a breadcrumb trail in place of the URL. Google now calls these "rich results".
They take up more space and answer part of the question before the click, which is why they often lift click-through rate even when the ranking position stays the same.
How to become eligible
Add schema.org markup, ideally as JSON-LD, for a type Google supports, include every required property, and make sure the markup describes content that is visible on the page. Then validate it and request indexing.
Google decides per query whether to show the enhancement. Valid markup makes a page eligible; it does not force the rich result to appear.
Why rich snippets disappear
Google has narrowed several types over the years. Since 2023, FAQ rich results are shown mainly for well-known government and health sites and HowTo results have been removed, and self-serving review stars on a business's own Organization or LocalBusiness pages are not shown.
Rich results also drop when markup breaks after a template change, when the content no longer matches the markup, or when Google loses trust in the site's quality. Re-validate after every release.
Example
Product markup that can show price and rating:
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Product",
"name": "Trail Running Shoe",
"image": "https://example.com/shoe.jpg",
"aggregateRating": { "@type": "AggregateRating", "ratingValue": "4.6", "reviewCount": "128" },
"offers": { "@type": "Offer", "price": "89.00", "priceCurrency": "USD", "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock" }
}