Schema markup not working? Check this Google change

Schema markup not working? A Google change reported on 21 August 2026 could explain incorrect product or business details if your schema markup, the hidden labels that describe your page to search engines, contains double-escaped text. That means a character such as an ampersand has been turned into a web page character code, then that code has been encoded again.

This is worth checking if your shop's product names or your business details contain unexpected codes. It is not a reason to assume all your labels are broken, or that every missing search feature needs a rebuild.

What Google changed in August

Google Search Central confirms that it now removes a single layer of web page character encoding when reading JSON-LD, a common code format for hidden page labels. For example, text supplied as Tea & coffee set can remain partly decoded as Tea & coffee set, rather than becoming the intended Tea & coffee set.

The visible page might still look perfectly normal. A shop's product title and the hidden version supplied to Google can be generated separately, so checking what customers see is not enough to rule this out.

The issue is how the text has been prepared, not whether your products deserve to appear in search. The announcement concerns how Google reads these labels. It does not, by itself, tell you that your pages have disappeared from ordinary search results or that your whole website needs changing.

How to check schema markup

Start with a live product or service page whose name contains an ampersand or another special character. Choose a page that could expose the problem, rather than testing only a homepage with a simple business name.

Use Google's Rich Results Test, a free tool that checks hidden labels used for search listings with extra details. Enter the page address and inspect the detected information, where available, rather than stopping at the overall pass or fail message.

Keep the check focused:

• Compare the visible product name with the name shown in the test. Look for character codes where ordinary punctuation should appear.
• Check descriptions and business names too. Compare the wording with what you actually intend customers to read.
• Record the page address and the unexpected text. Save the test output so you can compare it after any change.
• Find out what generates the labels: your shop platform, website theme or a separate website add-on. That tells you where a correction belongs.

If the tool does not expose the value you need, ask whoever maintains the website to inspect the hidden labels directly. A successful test does not prove that every name or description is accurate.

Search Console, Google's free tool for checking your site's presence in search, can provide useful warnings about supported product listings. When investigating Google structured data errors, meaning problems with these hidden labels, do not assume every warning comes from this change. A missing required detail and a wrongly decoded name need different fixes.

What to change if the text is affected

Google's instruction, reproduced in the Search Engine Roundtable report, is to use standard JSON escapes or Unicode hexadecimal escapes. JSON escapes are code sequences that safely represent special characters inside text. Unicode hexadecimal escapes represent characters using letter-and-number codes, providing another supported way to write them.

You do not need to memorise either method to report the fault. Give your website maintainer the affected page, the text Google appears to receive and the wording you expected. Ask them to check whether web page character codes are being encoded again when the hidden labels are generated.

Correct the source of the problem rather than manually patching each product page. If the labels come from a shared page template, the reusable layout behind similar pages, a correction there may address the affected output across those pages. Test the changed page and other pages using that template before treating the work as finished.

Avoid a blanket search-and-replace across your website. Different parts of a page handle special characters differently, and a hurried replacement can damage text that was already correct. If your website platform controls the code, send the example to its support team rather than pasting extra labels over the top.

Product rich results not showing?

Rich results are ordinary search listings with extra details, such as a product's price or availability. Correct hidden labels can support those listings, but passing a test does not mean Google will display them for every search.

This decoding change is therefore a possible cause of incorrect information, not a complete explanation for missing product features. If your product name reads correctly in the hidden labels, investigate the other warnings the test identifies instead of repeatedly rewriting that name.

For an online shop, compare the labelled price and stock status with what a customer sees on the page. For a clinic or consultancy, check that the business name and contact details are accurate. These checks are useful even when the recent change has nothing to do with your website.

Measure the affected pages separately from the rest of the site. Look at visits from unpaid search, the searches that brought people there and the enquiries or orders those visits produced. A missing visual feature and a fall in useful visits are different observations; neither proves this change caused the other.

When you can leave working schema alone

If your markup already uses standard JSON escaping, this change does not require a fix. Do not pay to rebuild working schema. Google's published correction advice concerns affected code, not a compulsory replacement of every website's hidden labels.

If you are comfortable running the test and comparing the text, you can do the initial check yourself. You do not need a paid audit merely to establish that a product name still reads correctly. Keep a note of what you checked and leave working code alone.

If your site does not use JSON-LD, this particular announcement is not a reason to add it in a hurry. Likewise, if the labels are correct but your booking form is broken or your service information is out of date, those visible problems deserve attention first.

Be wary of anyone selling a complete schema rebuild without showing an affected page and an incorrect value. Ask for evidence of the fault before agreeing to the remedy.

What this means for your unpaid search traffic

Your organic traffic means the visitors arriving through ordinary, unpaid search results. Hidden labels help describe your pages, but their value to your business sits further along: people finding accurate information, visiting a relevant page and making an enquiry or purchase. Repairing incorrect labels supports that process without promising more visitors.

At PageNumberOne, the Starter plan covers technical checks and fixes for page titles, search descriptions, headings and schema, alongside improvements to your main pages. Our automated SEO routine runs daily, with a weekly technical audit, search-position tracking and a plain-English monthly report. For this change, the job is to identify affected label output, correct it where possible and check it again, rather than replace code that already works.

A fault controlled by an outside website platform may need that supplier's involvement. Automation does not remove that boundary, and nobody can guarantee a place on Google. The useful approach is steady maintenance: checking relevant changes week after week while keeping attention on the pages that bring your business visitors and enquiries.