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Google's JSON-LD Parser Now Enforces Stricter Standards With Single-Pass HTML Unescaping

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TLDR

Google now enforces single-pass HTML unescaping in JSON-LD extraction, meaning double-escaped entities like & will no longer be auto-corrected.

Optimixed Overview

Optimixed's original report on this story.

Google announced a change to how Googlebot parses JSON-LD structured data, moving to stricter compliance with JSON standards. The search giant will now apply only one pass of HTML unescaping instead of multiple passes, meaning double-escaped HTML entities (such as & or ✔) will no longer be automatically expanded. Webmasters using JSON-LD for rich results—product prices, review stars, recipes, FAQs—must update their markup to use proper JSON escapes or Unicode hexadecimal escapes (like \u0026) to ensure continued indexing and display.

Topics:SEO News & Algorithm Updates
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