For a decade, the SEO playbook had a reliable trick: if the ten blue links were crowded, you won extra space with markup. FAQ blocks, how-to steps, sitelinks search boxes. More pixels, more clicks.
That era is closing.
What actually happened#
On November 5, 2025, Google published an update on its efforts to simplify the search results page. The language was quiet and the consequence wasn't. Google said it had identified features that "aren't being used very often and aren't adding significant value to users" and began phasing them out. It also confirmed that starting in January 2026, support for those structured data types would be removed from Search Console and its API.
Read that twice. Not just the feature. The reporting. If you can't measure it, you can't defend the budget line that produced it.
This wasn't a one-off. It followed Google's June 2025 post on simplifying the results page and sits alongside a broader consolidation: fewer decorative modules, more generative answers.
Why Google is doing it#
Because the answer is now the product.
Pew Research Center's July 22, 2025 analysis of 68,879 real Google searches from 900 U.S. adults found:
- Users who saw an AI summary clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits. Users who didn't see one clicked in 15%, nearly twice as often.
- Users clicked a link inside the AI summary in 1% of visits.
- Sessions ended entirely on 26% of pages with an AI summary, versus 16% without.
When two-thirds of searches end without a click to anyone's website, ornamental SERP features stop earning their pixels. Google is optimizing for the path users actually take.
"When two-thirds of searches end without a click, every dollar aimed at a SERP module is a dollar aimed at a shrinking target. I'd rather fund the sentence inside the answer than the pixels around it."
Andrew Bethel, COO, Perfectus Labs
What this means for your marketing#
Three shifts, in order of urgency.
1. Stop buying pixels. Start buying inclusion. The unit of visibility is no longer "a listing on a page." It's "a sentence in an answer, attributed to you." Those are different games with different inputs.
2. Rich results are still worth doing, for the right reasons.** Structured data hasn't stopped mattering. It still helps machines resolve what your business is, where it operates, what it sells, and what it costs. That resolution is exactly what an answer engine needs before it will name you. Build markup for machine comprehension, not for decoration.
3. Audit anything you built for a deprecated feature. If a page exists only to trigger a SERP module Google no longer renders, it's now overhead. Consolidate it into a page that answers a real question thoroughly.
What we changed in Cognos#
We treat structured data as an identity layer, not a formatting trick. Cognos maps every entity a model needs to cite you confidently (services, service areas, pricing posture, proof, named people) and keeps that graph consistent across your site, your profiles, and your third-party mentions.
The test we run is simple: if a model had only your markup and no rendered page, could it describe your business accurately enough to recommend you? Most sites fail that test. Fixing it is unglamorous work that pays for years.
The honest caveat#
Nobody outside Google knows the full list of what gets cut next. Anyone who tells you they do is selling something. What we know is directional and well-sourced: the results page is getting simpler, the answer is getting larger, and the click is getting rarer.
Plan for the version of search that's arriving, not the one you learned.
Sources: Google Search Central, Nov 5 2025; Pew Research Center, Jul 22 2025. Figures quoted as published.
