Rich Results Test is Google's own free tool for checking a page's structured data. Paste a URL or a code snippet and it tells you whether the JSON-LD parses correctly and whether the page is eligible for a specific rich result in Google Search — a FAQ rich result, a HowTo carousel, a Product snippet, and so on. It is the closest thing to an authoritative answer for "will Google show this as a rich result", and it is genuinely useful for that question.
That is not this tool's job. Rich Results Test parses your JSON-LD in isolation: it never reads the page's visible, rendered text at all, so it cannot tell you whether what the markup claims still matches what a visitor actually sees. Structured Data Drift Check does exactly that one comparison — it takes JSON-LD that already parses fine and checks, word for word, whether its claims appear in the page's own visible copy, reporting the exact character where the two diverge when they don't.
| Question | Where to answer it |
|---|---|
| Is my JSON-LD syntactically valid, and is this page eligible for a specific Google rich result? | Rich Results Test — that needs Google's own eligibility rules for each rich result type, which a text-diff tool has no opinion on. |
| My FAQPage markup is valid and eligible — does it still say what the page's visible text says today? | Structured Data Drift Check — paste the page's HTML and get the exact claim, and the exact character, where the two diverge, no signup, nothing leaves your device. |
| I want to know whether Google will actually show a rich result for this page. | Rich Results Test — a text-diff can confirm the words match, it makes no claim about eligibility or ranking. |
| I want to check this on every page of a build, as a CI gate, without uploading anything to Google. | Structured Data Drift Check's CLI — it reads only local files and never makes a network call. |
The two are not substitutes. A page that needs to know whether it qualifies for a rich result at all needs Google's own eligibility checker — nothing else can answer that authoritatively. A page whose markup already passes that check, but whose visible copy was edited afterward and the JSON-LD was not, needs the comparison Rich Results Test was never built to make. Running both catches more than either alone: Rich Results Test for eligibility, this tool for whether the eligible markup is still telling the truth.
They check different things. Rich Results Test parses your JSON-LD, tells you whether it is syntactically valid, and reports whether the page is eligible for a specific rich result in Google Search. Structured Data Drift Check does not check eligibility at all. It takes JSON-LD that already parses fine and asks a narrower question Rich Results Test does not ask: does the text inside that JSON-LD actually appear, word for word, in the page's own visible content. A FAQPage block can be perfectly valid and fully eligible in Rich Results Test while describing an answer that was rewritten on the page six months ago and never updated in the markup. Rich Results Test has no way to catch that, because it never reads the page's visible text at all.
No. Rich Results Test validates the structured data against schema.org's shape and Google's eligibility rules for a given rich result type. It parses the JSON-LD in isolation and does not compare it against the rendered page content, so a FAQPage answer that no longer matches what a visitor reads on the page will still pass Rich Results Test as valid and eligible. Google's own guidelines say FAQPage and HowTo content must be visible on the page, but Rich Results Test's tool does not enforce that guideline by diffing the two texts — it only checks that the markup itself is well formed.
Yes. Rich Results Test is a free tool at Google's own search.google.com/test/rich-results, with no account required to test a single URL or code snippet. Structured Data Drift Check is also free, with no account, and the two are not competing on price — they check different things and neither replaces the other.
No. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Google. Google and Rich Results Test are named here only to describe what that tool checks and does not check, based on Google's own public documentation.
More: why Google requires structured data to match visible text.