How to Create HowTo Schema in 2026 (After Google Deprecation)

Chapter 1. Before you start

HowTo schema is in an awkward post-deprecation state. The type still exists on Schema.org. The Google Search Central docs still describe it. But the rich result it used to produce - the carousel of numbered steps with images - was removed from the SERP in September 2023 and hasn't returned. Before you ship HowTo schema, confirm that's the situation you want.

• Confirm the page is a true procedural recipe, not a comparison post, list, or explainer with an instructional aside. HowTo is for "do these N steps in order to accomplish X" content.
• Read Google's current HowTo guidance. The page is preserved at developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/how-to but it now explicitly states the rich result is no longer produced.
• Decide if Article + clean step structure is sufficient. For most how-to content, an Article record + numbered H2 steps will surface in AI engine answers just as well, without the deprecation overhead.
• If shipping HowTo anyway, model every step properly. AI engines that still ingest the type extract individual HowToStep records; partially-modeled steps produce noise.

Chapter 2. What happened in the September 2023 deprecation?

Google rolled HowTo rich results back in two stages. In mid-2023 they removed HowTo carousels from desktop entirely. In September 2023 they removed them from mobile, completing the deprecation. The official rationale was that the rich result didn't add enough value over the regular blue link result to justify the SERP real estate.

Three things changed for SEO operators on that date:

1. Traffic dip from former HowTo rich result holders. Sites that had a HowTo carousel ranking position lost the CTR uplift the rich result provided (roughly 15-30% based on our before/after audits on three sites).
2. Schema retained but no rich result. Google didn't strip the markup from the index - they just stopped surfacing it visually. The schema is still parsed and stored.
3. AI engines kept reading the schema. Perplexity and Gemini continue to ingest HowTo records when answering procedural queries. The schema is still functionally meaningful for AI search, just not for the traditional SERP.

For most editorial teams, the net-net was: keep existing HowTo schema (no penalty), but stop building new HowTo schema as the default for procedural posts. The cost-benefit shifted in favor of Article + clean step HTML.

Chapter 3. Required and recommended properties

Per Schema.org, HowTo requires name and step. Each HowToStep requires name and either text or a child HowToDirection. The recommended floor is much richer.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "HowTo",
  "name": "How to compress oversized images for Shopify",
  "description": "Compress images flagged by Ahrefs for size, while preserving display quality and SEO weight.",
  "image": "https://www.example.com/posts/compress-shopify-images/hero-16x9.jpg",
  "totalTime": "PT30M",
  "estimatedCost": {
    "@type": "MonetaryAmount",
    "currency": "USD",
    "value": "0"
  },
  "supply": [
    { "@type": "HowToSupply", "name": "List of oversized image URLs from Ahrefs" }
  ],
  "tool": [
    { "@type": "HowToTool", "name": "sharp-cli" },
    { "@type": "HowToTool", "name": "Shopify admin access" }
  ],
  "step": [
    {
      "@type": "HowToStep",
      "position": 1,
      "name": "Download the oversized images",
      "text": "Pull each flagged image from the live Shopify CDN to a local folder.",
      "image": "https://www.example.com/posts/compress-shopify-images/step-1.jpg",
      "url": "https://www.example.com/posts/compress-shopify-images#step-1"
    },
    {
      "@type": "HowToStep",
      "position": 2,
      "name": "Run the compression pipeline",
      "text": "Resize to 1600px max width, convert to WebP at quality 82.",
      "image": "https://www.example.com/posts/compress-shopify-images/step-2.jpg",
      "url": "https://www.example.com/posts/compress-shopify-images#step-2"
    }
  ]
}

The properties earn their place differently. totalTime is the big AI-engine pull signal - assistants quoting your post will pull "this takes about 30 minutes" directly from it. supply and tool let the schema distinguish "things you provide" from "things you use," which matters for recipes and physical builds but is often skipped for software workflows.

Chapter 4. Step modeling

Each HowToStep should be one discrete action with a clear completion. "Open Shopify admin" is a step. "Set up Shopify" is not - it's a section that contains multiple steps.

For multi-method procedures (e.g., "the easy way" and "the manual way"), use HowToSection to group steps. Each section contains its own ordered HowToStep array. This was originally a Google rich-result requirement for multi-method recipes; it's still good modeling hygiene even post-deprecation.

Chapter 5. HowTo vs Article: which one should you actually ship?

For most 2026 procedural content, the answer is Article (or BlogPosting). The reasoning:

Our default since the deprecation: Article + clean H2 / H3 step structure for almost every "how to" post. Reserve HowTo for content that genuinely matches the wikiHow recipe pattern - a single procedure, atomic numbered steps, one visual per step, no tangents.

Chapter 6. Where do you place HowTo schema on the site?

Single placement per HowTo page, in the <head> or just before </body>. Don't ship HowTo at the site level (it's a page-level type, not a site-level type).

If the post is part of a larger Article ecosystem, ship both: an Article or BlogPosting record AND a HowTo record in the same @graph. Cross-reference with mainEntityOfPage so consumers know which one is the primary entity for the URL.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@graph": [
    {
      "@type": "BlogPosting",
      "@id": "https://www.example.com/posts/compress-shopify-images#article",
      "mainEntityOfPage": "https://www.example.com/posts/compress-shopify-images",
      "author": { "@id": "..." }
    },
    {
      "@type": "HowTo",
      "@id": "https://www.example.com/posts/compress-shopify-images#howto",
      "name": "How to compress oversized images for Shopify",
      "step": [ ... ]
    }
  ]
}

Chapter 7. The breakages we see most often

Ranked by frequency across 29 sites still shipping HowTo schema in 2026:

• Steps with no name field (only text): violates the Schema.org HowToStep minimum. 23 of 29.
• No position on steps, so consumers can't reconstruct the order from the JSON. 18 of 29.
• No totalTime, removing the most valuable signal for AI engine "how long does this take" answers. 14 of 29.
• HowTo on pages that aren't really procedural - comparison posts, "5 ways to..." listicles. 11 of 29.
• Step text duplicated from the body HTML instead of summarizing. Doesn't break the schema but bloats payload. 9 of 29.
• Multi-method pages without HowToSection, mixing steps from different methods into a single flat array. 7 of 29.
• HowTo as the only schema on the page (no Article / BlogPosting), so the page has no general-purpose entity record. 5 of 29.

We track these and other schema breakages on running sites through our Sentry structured-data rule set.