What Is How To Schema Markup?
A type whose visible result was withdrawn years ago, describing something we deliberately do not publish. Both of those are worth saying plainly rather than presenting this as a technique waiting to be used.
What It Asserts
A sequence of steps that achieves a stated outcome, as shown on the page. The structure is the substance here: an ordered set of actions, in order, leading somewhere specific.
The outcome. What the steps produce.
A named result the reader will have achieved at the end. That is a claim. Block six covers why it has to be true rather than merely plausible.
The steps themselves. Ordered actions.
Each a discrete thing somebody does, in the sequence they do it. The ordering is part of the description rather than presentation, which is what distinguishes this type from a list.
The supporting detail. Materials, tools and time.
What somebody needs before starting and roughly how long it takes. Optional, though useful where the task genuinely requires anything.
Why the type exists at all. Instructions are a distinct kind of content.
A recipe, an assembly guide and a repair procedure share a shape that an article does not. Describing that shape was a reasonable thing for the vocabulary to allow, independently of what any search engine did with it.
The Visible Result Has Gone
How-To rich results are deprecated and display on no device. That happened in two stages and the second was some years ago, which makes any advice still presenting this as an opportunity conspicuously out of date.
The first stage. August 2023.
Google announced on its Search Central blog that How-To rich results were being limited to desktop devices. The appearance stopped on mobile at that point.
The second stage. September 2023.
Google extended the change to desktop, stating that as of 13 September Search no longer showed How-To rich results there and that the result type was deprecated. It has displayed nowhere since.
What was removed afterwards. The reporting.
That same announcement stated the How-To search appearance, the rich result report and Rich Results Test support would be dropped within thirty days, with Search Console API support removed within a hundred and eighty days.
What that leaves. A valid type with no appearance.
The markup remains part of the vocabulary and using it produces no result. Anybody proposing this type to obtain a visible enhancement is proposing something that stopped existing several years ago.
Why this page still exists. The question gets asked.
Guidance recommending this markup is still widely published. This page is reviewed quarterly by Andrew Odgers, Managing Director, alongside the other pages describing display behaviour.
Which Content Genuinely Suits It
Genuine step-by-step instructional content. Nothing else. Forcing an ordinary page into a step structure to use the markup produces a worse page, which is the whole practical warning here.
What genuinely suits it. Tasks with a sequence.
Something a person does, in order, arriving at a result. Where the order matters and skipping a stage breaks it, the type describes the content accurately.
What does not. Explanations wearing numbers.
An article about how something works is not a set of instructions, however many numbered headings it carries. The reader is not doing anything, which means there is no sequence to describe.
The failure mode. Rewriting to qualify.
Taking a page that explained something clearly and breaking it into artificial steps so the markup applies. The page becomes stilted, the steps are not really steps and nothing is gained.
Why that happens. The markup drove the content.
Exactly the reversal the FAQ page describes. FAQ markup covers the same pattern. Both produce padding dressed as structure.
The test. Would you have written it this way.
If the page would naturally be a set of numbered steps with no markup in the world, the type fits. If not, it does not.
We Mostly Do Not Use This
Our guides describe how work is done so a client understands what they are buying, rather than teaching them to do it themselves. Genuine step-by-step content is therefore rare across everything we build, so this type rarely applies.
What our guides do instead. Explain rather than instruct.
How something works, what it costs you, what goes wrong and what to ask a supplier. That is the shape of nearly every page across this site, including this one.
Why that is deliberate. It matches what we sell.
Somebody reading our material is deciding whether to engage a supplier or understanding what one is doing. A set of instructions serves a different reader with a different intention.
Why we say so rather than staying quiet. The alternative is pretending.
A section covering thirteen types could present each as something to implement. On this one that would be misleading, since we would be recommending a shape our own content does not take.
What this is not. An oversight.
Nobody forgot to write instructional content. It is a content position taken on purpose. The absence of this markup across our builds follows from it rather than from neglect.
Where it does appear. Occasionally, for clients.
Some clients legitimately publish instructions, which is block five. Where they do, the markup describes it accurately, whatever the display position happens to be.
Where It Does Apply
Plenty of businesses legitimately publish instructions. For them this is ordinary useful content rather than a compromise. Three cases cover most of it.
Product assembly and use. The clearest.
A business selling something a customer puts together or operates. Instructions are part of the product rather than marketing, so publishing them well reduces support calls.
Account setup and configuration. Service businesses.
Where a customer has to do something at their end before you can act. Getting them through it accurately is in everybody's interest and the content pays for itself.
A process the customer completes. Forms and applications.
Anything the customer must work through themselves, whether an application, a claim or a registration. Clear steps here reduce errors that cost both sides time.
What these share. The reader is genuinely doing something.
In each case somebody is performing a task rather than deciding whether to hire anybody. That is the condition. It is what our own guides do not meet.
Whether to mark it up. Reasonably, yes.
The description is accurate and accurate descriptions are worth having, provided nobody expects an appearance in exchange.
Steps Must Be Real And Complete
The marked-up steps have to match the page and actually produce the outcome claimed. Both halves matter. The second is the one people overlook.
Matching the page. The usual rule.
Every step described should be a step shown. Markup listing eight stages where the page displays five is describing a page that does not exist.
Producing the outcome. The stronger claim.
Stating that these steps achieve that result asserts they are sufficient. A sequence that leaves out something essential is a false claim even where every listed step is accurate.
Why omission is common. Assumed knowledge.
Whoever wrote the instructions knows the task and skips what seems obvious. The reader does not, gets stuck at an unstated stage and concludes the instructions are wrong. They are.
What that costs a business. Trust and support time.
Incomplete instructions generate exactly the calls they were published to prevent, while making the business look careless. This is a content quality problem before it is a markup one.
The check worth doing. Have somebody else follow them.
Give the steps to a person who has not done the task. Where they stop is the missing step. The full series is on the schema and structured data guide. What is schema markup sets out the assertion rule in general.
We explain the
work rather than
teach it.
Our guides describe how something is done so you understand what you are buying, rather than walking you through doing it yourself. That is a deliberate position. It is why this particular markup rarely applies to anything we build.
On every page we build:
This result type has been deprecated since 2023. We will not sell you work to obtain it.
Every guide.
One practice.
What structured data is, which types apply to your business, how to test it, where the results features come from and what to do when nothing appears.
