Does FAQ schema still earn rich results, or did Google scale it back?
- Published November 6, 2026
- Linked from 3 answers
- In a cluster of 7
No. FAQ markup no longer earns a rich result for any site. Google first scaled the feature back in August 2023 and then removed it: its documentation changelog recorded in May 2026 that the FAQ rich result “will no longer appear in Google Search starting May 7, 2026”; in June 2026 Google removed the FAQ rich result documentation itself.
How the feature wound down
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| August 8, 2023 | Google announced that FAQ rich results "will only be shown for well-known, authoritative government and health websites" |
| September 2023 | Google removed the HowTo structured data documentation, since that rich result was no longer shown on desktop or mobile |
| May 2026 | Google deprecated the FAQ rich result, with display ending May 7, 2026 |
| June 2026 | The FAQ rich result documentation was removed |
The August 2023 announcement is on the Search Central blog. For sites outside that government and health group, the expandable questions under a listing had already disappeared in 2023; the 2026 change ended them for the remaining government and health sites too.
Do you need to remove the markup?
No rush. In the 2023 post Google wrote: “While you can drop this structured data from your site, there’s no need to proactively remove it.” It added that “Structured data that’s not being used does not cause problems for Search, but also has no visible effects in Google Search.” Leaving existing FAQPage markup in place costs you nothing in search, and removing it gains you nothing in search. Clean it up when you next edit the template, so your codebase stops carrying markup whose documentation no longer exists.
What still works for question-and-answer content
The questions themselves keep their value when they answer something a reader still wants to know after the main content. That value comes from the visible text, not from the markup. For AI features in Search, Google’s AI features guidance says there is no special schema.org structured data you need to add, so FAQ markup is not a route into AI Overviews either. Whether an FAQ section helps a page at all depends on what it adds; for that test, see whether adding an FAQ section helps depth or just pads the page. Where those questions should live is decided in whether FAQs belong on every page or on a dedicated page.
Stop planning work around FAQ rich results. If you need a change to the listing itself, the title link and snippet are the parts you can still influence.
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