Rich result
A search listing dressed up with stars, prices, images, or dates instead of the plain blue link and grey blurb.
See it
What it is
A rich result is a search listing that gets more than a blue link, a URL, and two lines of grey text: review stars, price and stock status, cook time and calories, event dates, an image thumbnail, a job's salary band. Google builds them from the structured data on your page, which is why the two terms get used interchangeably even though one is the input and the other is the output. The older name for the same thing is 'rich snippet'.
Chase them when the extra pixels change behavior: ecommerce listings, recipes, local businesses, events, and job posts all pull meaningfully better click-through when they carry stars, prices, or images. Search Console has a report per rich-result type showing valid items, warnings, and errors, and the Rich Results Test previews what you are eligible for on a single URL.
The word that matters is eligible. Correct markup buys you a ticket, not a seat: Google decides per query whether to render the enhancement, and it retires whole categories when they get abused. The HowTo rich result is not reduced, it is removed: Google dropped that result type outright. FAQ rich results are now largely restricted to authoritative government and health sites, so if you are neither, do not plan a page around earning one. Build the page so it works as a plain listing, and treat the rich version as upside.
Ask AI for it
Make these pages eligible for Google rich results. Pick the right schema.org type per template (Product with Offer and AggregateRating, Recipe with cookTime and nutrition, Event with startDate and location, JobPosting with baseSalary, Article with author and dates), emit it as JSON-LD, and mirror every marked-up value in the visible page content. Add BreadcrumbList for the path trail, keep the title tag and meta description tuned for the listing, then check each URL in the Rich Results Test and list which enhancements it now qualifies for. Do not propose HowTo markup for a rich result, since that type no longer exists, and do not treat FAQ markup as an available enhancement unless this site is an authoritative government or health source.