A recent announcement on the Google Search Central blog gave a Redditor the impression that Google was significantly reducing the use of structured data, causing them to ask if it’s worthwhile to use it anymore.
The person on Reddit posted:
“Google just posted a new update — they’re removing support for some structured data types starting in January 2026. Dataset already works only in Dataset Search, and rich results are getting more selective.
So… is schema still worth it? Or are we moving past it entirely?”
Matt Southern covered the blog post (Google Deprecates Practice Problem Structured Data In Search), focusing on the specific structured data that Google was deprecating. Google’s blog post, authored by John Mueller, could, if read quickly, be accidentally interpreted to be more alarming than it was intended to be.
Google’s announcement explained:
“We’re constantly working to simplify the search results page, so that it’s quick and easy to find the information and websites you’re looking for. As part of this effort, we regularly evaluate all of our existing features to make sure they’re still useful, both for people searching on Google and for website owners.
Through this process, we’ve identified some features that aren’t being used very often and aren’t adding significant value to users. In these cases, we’ve found that other advancements on the search results page are able to get people what they’re looking for more seamlessly. So we’re beginning to phase these lesser-used features out.
For most searches, you likely won’t notice a major difference — most of these features didn’t trigger often and weren’t interacted with much by users. But overall, this update will simplify the page and improve the speed of search results.”
Ending with the following sentence:
“Starting in January 2026, we’ll remove support for the structured data types in Search Console and its API.”
Google’s Search Features Are Always Changing
Someone responded to the initial post to reassure them that Google’s search features and the structured data that triggers them are always changing. That’s true. Google Search has consistently been in a state of change and never more visibly on the front end as it is today with AI search.
Google’s John Mueller responded to the Redditor who noted that Google is constantly changing by affirming that markup types (which includes Schema.org structured data) are always changing.
He responded:
“Exactly. Understand that markup types come and go, but a precious few you should hold on to (like title, and meta robots).”
Structured Data Curation Is Automatic
Keeping up with Schema.org structured data is easy with any modern content management system through plugins or as part of a native functionality because they are responsive to Google’s structured data guidance. So in general, it’s not something that a publisher or SEO needs to think about. Publishers on WordPress just need to keep their plugins updated.
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