FAQ schema after Google's change: what it still does, and how to write it

What FAQPage markup is

FAQPage is a schema.org type for a page that holds a list of questions, each with one accepted answer. In JSON-LD it is a script block with a mainEntity array of Question nodes, each carrying a name (the question) and an acceptedAnswer whose text is the answer. That is the whole vocabulary. The value is not in the markup's complexity but in what it labels: a passage that answers one question completely, which is what a buyer's query and an assistant's retrieval are both looking for.

Until Google removed it in June 2026, its FAQPage documentation set three conditions: the questions and answers visible on the page, one answer per question written by the site rather than submitted by users, and no advertising. The documentation is gone, but the conditions still describe a real FAQ, which was the point of them.

What changed in 2023 and 2026, and what did not

In August 2023 Google announced that FAQ rich results would be shown only for well-known, authoritative government and health websites, and that HowTo rich results would be reduced and then removed. For a plumber, a dentist or a law firm, the expandable questions under a Google result went away then. The rest followed in 2026: Google's changelog records that the FAQ rich result stopped appearing in Search on May 7, 2026, for every site, and that its documentation was removed in June. Anyone selling FAQ schema today as a way to "take up more space in search results" is describing a feature Google no longer has.

What did not change is the markup's meaning. A FAQPage block still tells any parser that reads it: here are the questions this page answers, and here are the answers, verbatim. Google's page on AI features says no special markup is required for AI Overviews, and no other assistant operator documents reading FAQPage at all, so the honest claim for the markup is modest: it removes any doubt about which text on the page is the answer to which question. The visible pairs do the persuading.

Why the visible pairs matter more than the markup

With web search on, an assistant builds its answer from the pages it fetches, and a passage that answers the buyer's question completely is one it can repeat. In our audit of 9,483 small business websites (40 trades, 90 metros, September 2026), 61.5% had no question-and-answer content of any kind: no FAQ section, no FAQPage markup, nothing shaped like the thing a buyer asks. And half the sites (50.7%) had at least one heading phrased as a question with no answer under it in any form a machine could isolate.

So the gap is the content, and the markup is a label for content that exists. A page with six real questions answered in plain sentences and no markup gives an assistant six passages to lift. A page with FAQPage markup wrapped around marketing copy gives it a label on nothing. Write the pairs first; the block takes ten minutes once they exist.

How to write questions a buyer asked and answers a machine can lift

1. Take the questions from the phone, not from a keyword tool. The five things people ask before they book are the five headings. Write them the way people say them: "do you come out at night", not "emergency service availability".
2. Answer each in forty to eighty words, in the first sentence. "Yes, we take emergency calls until 11pm, and the call-out fee is stated on the price page" is an answer; "we pride ourselves on availability" is not.
3. Put a fact in every answer: a price or range, a time, an area, a condition. Facts are what get quoted; adjectives are what get skipped.
4. One question per pair, one answer per question. A question that needs two answers is two questions.
5. Keep them on the page they belong to. The emergency question goes on the emergency page, the pricing question on the pricing page. One FAQPage block per page, describing that page's pairs only.

The block, and the rule that governs it

The markup repeats the visible text exactly. Not a paraphrase, not a shorter version, not a version with the price removed. If the two differ, a parser has two answers to one question and no way to choose, and Google's general structured data guidelines say not to mark up content that is not visible to readers. Generate the block from the same source as the visible pairs where you can; where you cannot, copy and paste and check.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "FAQPage",
  "mainEntity": [
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "Do you come out at night for a burst pipe?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Yes. We take emergency calls until 11pm, seven days, across Austin and Round Rock. The call-out fee is on our price page and is charged once, whatever the job turns out to be."
      }
    },
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "How much does a water heater replacement cost?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Most standard tank replacements we do fall in the range stated on our price page, fitted and including removal of the old unit. Tankless and relocations are quoted after a visit. Prices current as of the month shown on that page."
      }
    }
  ]
}
</script>

Both answers above are the kind a parser can use because each states a condition and points at a fact the page carries. Notice what they do not do: no superlatives, no "contact us to learn more", no answer that is really an advertisement, which a reader skips.

Mistakes that make the block worthless

How to check yours

View the page's source with scripts disabled. The questions and answers should be there as text, and a FAQPage block should be there with the same strings. Compare them word for word; the ones that differ are the ones to fix. Then fetch the page as a crawler would and confirm the text survives; the crawler access check covers whether the crawlers are allowed in at all. The last check is the one that matters: ask the four assistants the question your FAQ answers and see whether the answer that comes back is yours. Our measurement repeats that check with one of them, Claude, across a fixed panel of twelve buyer questions, once the fixes are live and every month with monitoring.