FAQ schema no longer gives rich snippets: what you need to know.

Since 7 May 2026, Google no longer shows FAQ rich results in its search results. That expandable question-and-answer block beneath a listing, which your site could once use to claim extra space, is gone. Not temporarily, not in selected countries, simply everywhere. Have you added FAQ schema in recent months hoping for more visibility in Google itself? Then you have spent time on something that no longer pays off in the classic results. Below you will read exactly what has changed, why Google did it and where your structured data time is now better spent.

What stopped on 7 May 2026

Google states on Search Central that FAQ rich results no longer appear in search results from 7 May 2026, in any country. In June the corresponding filter disappeared from Search Console, and since August the API no longer returns data on FAQ schema either. Your JSON-LD markup remains valid under the schema.org standard and Google does not penalise it, but it simply no longer earns you extra pixels in the SERP.

That is a bigger change than it seems. For many SMB sites and agencies, FAQ schema was one of the easiest ways to look more prominent among competitors. More space on the results page, more text above the fold, a head start at an equal position. That lever is now gone.

This is not the first clean-up

Anyone who has been around a while will recognise the pattern. HowTo rich results disappeared earlier, first on mobile in August 2023 and a month later on desktop too. Both times the motive was the same. Too many sites used the markup not to help users but to capture extra space in the results. John Mueller responded aptly to this last autumn, when an earlier announcement caused some unrest.

"Google is not killing schema. Markup types come and go, but a precious few you should hold on to, like title and meta robots."

So the format itself is not going away. Individual rich result types, however, are regularly cleared out once abuse gets the upper hand.

Why FAQ schema in particular had to go

The problem was predictable once you grasp the idea. An FAQ block took little time to add and worked independently of the quality of the rest of the page. That made it attractive for exactly the kind of use Google dislikes, think generic questions with half-baked answers, purely to claim more space. When schema.org released version 30 in March 2026, with new classes such as Credential and Error and a tightened structure for Quantity, that was mostly about technical maintenance of the standard itself. At Google the consideration was different. There, the quality of the results page came first, not the schema standard.

What is still worth maintaining

Not all structured data is under pressure. Mueller himself named a short list that stays standing, and it matches what we usually check first on sites during a technical audit. Organization and LocalBusiness for your company details. Product and Offer for prices and availability. Review and AggregateRating for stars in the results. BreadcrumbList for your page structure, and Article or NewsArticle if you work with content. Do you have videos on your site? Then check your VideoObject markup too. The interactionCount property was replaced by interactionStatistic in February 2026; old implementations keep working but no longer deliver complete data.

Research by Timmermans Media, carried out on the top 500 Dutch domains and published via Frankwatching, showed how lopsided the attention already was. 51.4 percent of sites had structured data somewhere, but only 1.5 percent used FAQ schema specifically. Most sites had already put their time into other schema types. In hindsight that turned out to be the right call.

Should you remove existing FAQ schema, then?

No, and that is immediately the most common question we get about this. Leave existing markup in place; removing it costs time and delivers nothing. What you should stop doing is adding new FAQ schema with the sole aim of a rich snippet in Google itself. For AI answer engines such as ChatGPT and Perplexity it is more nuanced. They do not draw their answers from the same rich result pipeline and demonstrably favour pages where a question is answered directly and briefly in the running text. Whether the separate JSON-LD block still makes a difference there cannot be proven conclusively. The underlying structure, a clear question followed by a direct answer, remains worthwhile. Just no longer for the reason you originally added it.

Check today in five steps

• Open Google Search Central or your own Search Console export and see whether you still have FAQPage schema running. Leave it in place, but do not expect a rich snippet from it any more.
• Go through your most important product pages for Product and Offer schema. If the price or stock status is missing, you are losing more revenue there than from a vanished FAQ block.
• Use Google's Rich Results Test to check which of your current schema types are still actually eligible for a rich result.
• If you have video embeds with structured data, update interactionCount to interactionStatistic.
• Do not aim your next content planning at new FAQ blocks, but at Review schema if you have customer reviews that are not yet marked up.

That last point is usually the biggest quick win. Businesses that show stars in the results often see a noticeably higher click-through rate at the same position. And Review schema, unlike FAQ schema, is not on the clean-up list.

Frequently asked questions

Will I get a penalty if I leave FAQ schema in place?

No. Google simply ignores the markup for the rich result; there is no penalty or ranking disadvantage attached. Only the visual advantage in the search results has disappeared.

Does FAQ schema still work for AI Overviews or chatbots?

There is no hard measurement of that. The underlying approach, answering a question directly and briefly, remains valuable for how AI systems read and summarise text. The separate JSON-LD block itself matters less than a readable question-and-answer structure on the page.

Which schema types should I prioritise this quarter?

Start with Product and Offer if you sell anything, add Review and AggregateRating wherever you have reviews, and make sure Organization and BreadcrumbList are correct everywhere. Those are the types Google itself names as remaining relevant.