Google Clarifies the Needs for Course Structured Data

The omission of structured data requirements from the course is now included in the standards. Sites that don't comply risk being excluded from rich results.
SIA Team
July 9, 2022

Google updated the requirements for leveraging structured data to show up in the Course rich results. You might not be qualified for the profitable outcome if the requirements are not followed.

“Clarified that you must add three courses to be eligible for the Course rich result. This is not a new requirement; it was previously only documented in the Carousel documentation,” Google changelog said.

In the portion of the course structured data guidelines titled Technical Guidelines, Google added more sentences.

“You must mark up at least three courses. The courses can be on separate detail pages, or in an all-in-one page. You must add Carousel markup to either a summary page or an all-in-one page.”

Before this explanation, Course-compliant developers and SEOs would not have been aware of this need unless they had looked through the Carousel structured data standards.

Although the new criterion is not brand-new, it wasn’t listed on the Course structured data requirements page before.

“A description of an educational course which may be offered as distinct instances at which take place at different times or take place at different locations, or be offered through different media or modes of study. An educational course is a sequence of one or more educational events and/or creative works which aims to build knowledge, competence or ability of learners.” Schema.org website said.

Students can find the courses they’re seeking for in the rich results produced by educational course search queries as long as schools fulfill the Google Search Central structured data guidelines and requirements for the Course structured data, and everyone benefits.

The search community was not made aware of the significance of the Carousel structured data requirements in the earlier documentation.