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Structured data has everything Google needs
seo.structured-data-missing-required
Why this matters
Markup that parses perfectly is still discarded if it is missing a property Google treats as mandatory — a product with no price, an offer that never says which currency, a recipe with no picture. Nothing warns the site owner. The block is there, it looks right in the source, and no rich result ever appears. It is a more common failure than broken markup and a harder one to notice, because everything about it looks correct.
Who fixes it
You can, usually
Roughly how long
1–2 hours
Care needed
Low risk to change
How to fix it
Add the named property to each block, then confirm with Google's Rich Results Test — it reports the same requirements and will tell you the moment the block becomes eligible. On WordPress or Shopify the markup usually comes from a plugin or theme setting rather than from the template, so the field to fill in is generally in an admin screen rather than in code.
How we score it
Failing this check takes up to 12 points off your search score. It is a fact about your site rather than a measurement, so it reads the same on every scan until you change something.
Does your site pass this one?
This check runs on every scan, along with the other 106. Free, no account, and you see the evidence for each result.
Check my siteOther search checks
- Canonical tags point somewhere validA canonical tag tells Google which address is the real one for a page. When it points somewhere wrong — another domain, a dead page, or the wrong protocol — Google follows it anyway, and the page you wanted indexed can be dropped in favour of one that does not exist.
- Content has been updated recentlySome content is meant to sit still, and age alone is not a fault. But prices, opening hours and staff pages that have not been touched in over a year are usually wrong by now — and a visitor who acts on the wrong opening hours does not come back to check whether the rest was right.
- Descriptions are a sensible lengthLong descriptions get truncated mid-sentence; very short ones waste the space you are given.
- Each page has exactly one title tagA page can only have one title. When there are several, the browser and Google each pick one — and they do not always pick the same one, so what you see in the tab may not be what appears in search.
- Each page has one main headingSeveral top-level headings makes the structure of the page ambiguous. Worth checking rather than urgent — modern HTML permits it, and Google handles it, but it usually signals that headings are being chosen for their size.
- Every page has a main headingThe h1 is the headline of the page. Without one, both visitors skimming and search engines parsing the page have nothing telling them what it is about.