Google Removed FAQ Rich Results. Should You Keep Your FAQ Schema?
Google added a deprecation notice on 8 May 2026 stating the FAQ rich result would stop appearing in Search from 7 May 2026, and later removed the documentation for the feature entirely. If your FAQ pages lost their dropdown in search results, that is why.
What did not change: FAQ content still helps readers and still reads cleanly to answer engines, and Google’s own guidance says no special schema is required for AI Overviews or AI Mode in the first place. Below is the timeline, what the removal does and doesn’t mean, and what to actually do with your existing FAQPage markup.
What happened to FAQ rich results in Google Search?
On 8 May 2026, Google Search Central added a deprecation notice to its documentation: the FAQ rich result would no longer appear in Google Search starting 7 May 2026. Some time after that, Google removed the documentation for the FAQ rich result feature entirely, on the basis that a feature no longer shown does not need a page describing how to qualify for it.
This was not the first cut. Back in 2023, Google had already restricted FAQ rich results to a narrow set of well-known, authoritative government and health sites, well before removing the feature outright — and How-to rich results were removed around the same time. May 2026 finished a retreat that had been underway for three years.
Why does losing a rich result matter?
A rich result is extra space in the search results page: instead of a single blue link and a snippet, a FAQ rich result showed expandable questions directly under the listing, taking up more visual room and, for the sites that had it, more of the searcher’s attention before they even clicked. Losing it means those pages now show as an ordinary listing — no dropdown, no extra real estate.
For a site that never had the FAQ rich result — most sites did not, since it had already been narrowed to authoritative government and health domains in 2023 — this change is close to irrelevant in practice. The confusion mostly affects site owners who still see “FAQ schema” recommended by an audit tool or a template and assume it is still buying them something in the results page. It is not, for this specific feature.
Does this mean FAQ content stopped helping?
No, and this is the distinction worth holding onto: Google removed a rich result, a specific visual treatment in search listings. It did not say FAQ content on a page stopped being useful, and it did not say structured data in general stopped mattering. Google’s own guidance on generative AI features states plainly that no special schema.org structured data is required to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode — that requirement never existed in the first place, for FAQ schema or any other kind.
Separately, Google’s AI optimization guide addresses structured data directly as something site owners over-focus on: it is not required for generative AI search and there is no special schema for it, but structured data can still be useful for rich-result eligibility more broadly, on results that still exist. FAQ just is not one of them anymore.
Should you remove your FAQPage markup?
There is no documented reason to rip it out, and no documented reason it is required either. Keeping FAQPage structured data on a page that already has a genuine FAQ section costs almost nothing to maintain and is not described anywhere as harmful. What it will not do anymore is produce the dropdown rich result in Google’s own search results — that mechanism is gone, regardless of how correctly the schema is written.
| Before 7 May 2026 | After 7 May 2026 |
|---|---|
| FAQ rich result could show as an expandable dropdown in Search. | FAQ rich result no longer appears in Google Search, for any site. |
| Eligibility had already been narrowed (2023) to well-known, authoritative government and health sites. | Documentation for the feature has been removed; there is nothing left to qualify for. |
| FAQPage schema was written partly to chase the dropdown. | FAQPage schema has no documented Google Search rich-result payoff left to chase. |
| A real, on-page FAQ section helped readers and supported the dropdown. | A real, on-page FAQ section still helps readers — that part didn’t change. |
The honest answer is that keeping the markup is a low-cost habit, not an active strategy. If maintaining it is genuinely a burden on a site, dropping it costs nothing measurable in Google Search today. If it is already in place and working, there is no urgency to remove it either.
Why a real FAQ section still matters for readers
Set the schema question aside and the content question is separate and, honestly, more important. A genuine FAQ section — real questions a buyer or reader actually asks, answered plainly and self-contained — still does the job it always did: it resolves the specific, narrow questions that a long article body does not always address head-on, and it gives a page a second, more direct way to answer the same underlying query.
That content also happens to be the kind of self-contained, question-and-answer text that is easiest for a person skimming a page, or an AI engine extracting a passage, to lift cleanly. That is a property of clear writing, not of the schema markup wrapped around it. A page can have excellent FAQ content with no FAQPage schema at all and still read well to a person or a machine; the schema is a label on the content, not the substance of it.
What we did with our own FAQ schema
ciaobellamarketing.com keeps FAQPage schema on its own pages, and publishes an llms.txt file as well. Neither decision is made on the assumption that Google ranks pages higher for having them. We keep both because they cost little to maintain and because other systems beyond Google Search may read structured data or a plain-text index differently — not because either one is documented to move a Google ranking or a Google AI Overview citation.
That is the same standard worth applying to any structured data decision: keep what is cheap and plausible, do not expect a Google Search reward that is not documented, and do not spend real budget rebuilding a rich result that no longer exists.
How do you check what you actually lost?
If FAQ rich results were showing for a site before May 2026, the way to see the effect is the regular Search Console Performance report: compare impressions and click-through rate on the affected pages before and after the removal date, filtered to that query set. That is a separate report from the newer Generative AI performance report, which tracks AI Overviews and AI Mode impressions specifically and has nothing to do with the FAQ rich result change — see our guide on tracking AI Overviews traffic in Search Console for that one.
Most sites, since they never had the FAQ rich result to begin with, will see no change at all worth investigating. The check is worth ten minutes; a redesign of the FAQ section around a feature that no longer exists is not.
Verified 24 September 2026 against Google Search Central’s documentation updates and AI features guidance
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Frequently asked questions
Will FAQ rich results come back to Google Search?
Google hasn’t documented any plan to reinstate the FAQ rich result. It added a deprecation notice, removed the feature on 7 May 2026, and later removed its own documentation for it. Planning around its return would be guessing at something Google has said nothing about.
Does removing FAQPage schema help or hurt my SEO?
Neither is documented. Google states structured data isn’t required for generative AI search and there is no special schema needed for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Removing FAQPage markup won’t improve rankings, and keeping it won’t produce a rich result now that the feature is gone.
Should I still write a real FAQ section on my pages?
Yes. A genuine, self-contained FAQ section answers the narrow questions a longer article doesn’t always address directly, which helps readers and gives an answer engine a cleanly extractable passage. That value comes from the writing itself, not from any schema wrapped around it.
Does FAQ schema help you get cited in Google AI Overviews?
No. Google’s documentation says no special schema.org structured data is required to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. The FAQ rich result was always a separate, older search feature, and its removal has no documented connection to AI Overview eligibility either way.
What should I check if I relied on FAQ rich results for visibility?
Compare impressions and click-through rate on the affected pages in Search Console’s regular Performance report, before and after 7 May 2026. That is separate from the newer Generative AI performance report, which tracks AI Overviews and AI Mode impressions and has nothing to do with this specific change.
Sources
- Google Search Central — Search documentation updates Deprecation notice added 8 May 2026: FAQ rich result no longer appears in Search starting 7 May 2026; documentation later removed. Also records the 2023 restriction of FAQ rich results to authoritative government/health sites and the removal of How-to rich results.
- Google Search Central — AI features and your website Last updated 10 December 2025. No special schema.org structured data is needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
- Google Search Central — Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search Last updated 10 July 2026. Structured data is not required for generative AI search and has no special schema, but can still help rich-result eligibility generally.