HowTo Step Results: What Happened and What to Do Instead

What happened to HowTo results

For several years, pages with HowTo markup could show their steps directly in Google: an expandable list under the listing on desktop, and a swipeable carousel of steps with images on mobile. In 2023 Google cut the feature back, first limiting it to desktop and then removing it altogether. The HowTo report and HowTo checks were then taken out of Search Console and the Rich Results Test.

Google gave a straightforward reason at the time: it wanted a cleaner and more consistent search experience, and it cut back HowTo and FAQ results together. FAQ results survived only for well-known, authoritative government and health sites. HowTo results did not survive for anyone.

What did not change

• The markup is still valid schema.org. HowTo, HowToStep and related types remain part of the vocabulary, and a validator will still accept them.
• Your rankings were not penalised. Losing a rich result changes how the listing looks, not where it ranks.
• Instructional searches still exist. People still search "how to bleed a radiator"; Google now answers them with ordinary listings, videos, images, featured snippets and AI-generated overviews instead.

Errors inside HowTo blocks, such as missing steps or badly formatted durations, are covered by the HowTo schema errors guide. This page is about what to do strategically now the rich result has gone.

Working out what the change cost you

Before rewriting anything, find out whether the loss matters for your site. Many publishers found that clicks held up better than they feared, because the steps shown in search sometimes answered the question without a visit.

1. In Search Console's Performance report, compare clicks and impressions to your instructional pages for a period well before 2023 with the same season afterwards, so you are not comparing summer DIY with winter DIY.
2. Look at click-through rate as well as clicks. A lower rate with steady impressions means the listing became less eye-catching; a fall in impressions means you are showing for fewer searches, which is a ranking or content question.
3. Check which queries those pages now show for, and which other features appear on those results pages: videos, images, "People also ask" and featured snippets. Those are the openings still available.

If your data does not go back that far, skip the comparison and work from the current results pages for your main topics. What Google shows for them today is the useful information.

Keep, trim or remove existing HowTo markup

There is no penalty for leaving accurate HowTo markup in place, and no benefit in Google for keeping it. The decision is about maintenance cost and accuracy.

Whatever you choose, do not add HowTo markup to new pages in the expectation of a Google feature. If you keep it, make sure the steps in the markup are the same steps visitors see, so the block stays truthful.

Page structure that still wins instructional searches

With the rich result gone, the visible page does the work. Google can still pull a numbered list into a featured snippet, and AI answer engines extract clearly structured steps far more reliably than long paragraphs. None of this needs special markup.

• Answer first. Put a one or two sentence summary of the whole job at the top: what it involves, how long it takes, what you need.
• Use a real ordered list (<ol>) or one heading per step. Steps written as a single long paragraph cannot be lifted out cleanly.
• Start each step with an action. "Turn off the heating and let the radiators cool" rather than "At this point it is worth thinking about...".
• Keep tools and materials in their own list above the steps, so readers and machines can find them.
• One image per step where it helps, with alt text that describes what the step looks like. Good step images can also be found in image search.
• Put warnings where they apply, next to the dangerous step, not only in a disclaimer at the bottom.

<h2>How to bleed a radiator</h2>
<p>Takes about 10 minutes per radiator. You need a radiator key and a cloth.</p>
<ol>
  <li>Turn the heating off and wait until the radiators are cool.</li>
  <li>Hold a cloth under the bleed valve at the top corner.</li>
  <li>Turn the key a quarter turn anticlockwise until air hisses out.</li>
  <li>Close the valve as soon as water appears.</li>
  <li>Check the boiler pressure and top up if it has dropped.</li>
</ol>

Video key moments: the closest thing to a step result

If you have a video of the task, it is now the strongest route to a visual result for instructional searches. Google can show a video with key moments, links to points in the video, which gives searchers something close to the old step list. For videos on YouTube, chapters set in the description are the usual source. For videos hosted on your own site, you can mark the moments up with Clip inside a VideoObject.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "VideoObject",
  "name": "How to bleed a radiator",
  "description": "Five-minute walkthrough of bleeding a domestic radiator and checking boiler pressure afterwards.",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://example.co.uk/video/bleed-radiator-thumb.jpg",
  "uploadDate": "2026-02-10T09:00:00+00:00",
  "duration": "PT5M12S",
  "contentUrl": "https://example.co.uk/video/bleed-radiator.mp4",
  "hasPart": [
    {
      "@type": "Clip",
      "name": "Turn off the heating",
      "startOffset": 0,
      "endOffset": 38,
      "url": "https://example.co.uk/guides/bleed-a-radiator?t=0"
    },
    {
      "@type": "Clip",
      "name": "Open the bleed valve",
      "startOffset": 38,
      "endOffset": 145,
      "url": "https://example.co.uk/guides/bleed-a-radiator?t=38"
    },
    {
      "@type": "Clip",
      "name": "Check the boiler pressure",
      "startOffset": 145,
      "endOffset": 312,
      "url": "https://example.co.uk/guides/bleed-a-radiator?t=145"
    }
  ]
}
</script>

Each url must open the video at that point, so your player needs to support a start-time parameter. Offsets are in seconds. The video must be visible on the page, not hidden behind a tab that only loads on click, and Google must be able to fetch the video file and thumbnail.

The fix, step by step

Edge cases and questions that come up

Other search engines

Other search engines and some assistants may read HowTo markup, and schema.org still defines it. That is a reasonable reason to keep accurate, automatically generated markup, but not a reason to invest heavily in it; none of the major engines publishes a HowTo rich result you can count on.

Old reports that still show HowTo

If an old export, third-party crawler or plugin dashboard still lists HowTo as a missing enhancement, that tool is out of date. Search Console no longer has a HowTo report.

Recipes and crafts

Recipe pages have their own rich result, which is still shown. If you publish craft patterns or kits that are not food, they do not have a dedicated rich result; focus on images, video and clear structure.

Software help pages

Product documentation and help centres benefit most from clear headings, stable URLs and breadcrumbs, and from a good site search. Their steps are often lifted into featured snippets when written as tidy ordered lists.