The short version: Structured data pays off most where it earns a visual rich result, as recipes do.
What they studied
Rakuten added Recipe structured data through its content management system and used Search Console reports to fix errors.
Key findings
- Search engine traffic to recipe pages rose 2.7 times.
- Average session duration rose 1.5 times.
- The markup took about two weeks to add through the CMS.
Key learnings
- Structured data pays off most where it earns a visual rich result, as recipes do.
- Add markup in the template once, then monitor Search Console for errors.
Things to keep in mind
- Published by Google, one company, and from 2018. Google has since reduced some rich result types.
Read it alongside
- MX Player: 3x Google traffic with video markup and sitemaps (Google Search Central, 2021)
- Saramin: doubling job-season search traffic with technical clean-up (Google Search Central, 2020)
Source
Official case study by Rakuten, published by Google Search Central, May 8, 2018.
We read the source and checked every figure on this page against it on October 13, 2026. Summaries and learnings are ours. Spotted an error? Tell us.
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