FAQ Schema Is Gone From Google: What to Do With Existing Markup

FAQ schema has had a slow, two-stage death, and I think a lot of site owners are only aware of the first stage. If you added FAQ markup years ago and never revisited it, here’s the full timeline and what actually needs to happen now.

Stage one: 2023

Google’s Search Central blog announced, in a post titled “Changes to HowTo and FAQ rich results,” that FAQ rich results would show only for “well-known, authoritative government and health websites” — every other site lost eligibility. This is widely reported as having happened on August 8, 2023, though I found a separate Search Central changelog entry showing September 14, 2023 instead, and couldn’t fully reconcile the discrepancy from the sources available. August 8 has the stronger, more consistent corroboration across trade press, so treat that as the better-supported date. HowTo rich results were restricted to desktop-only around the same time.

Stage two: May 2026 — this is the part people miss

This is a genuine, separate, more recent event, not just the 2023 restriction lingering. Google fully discontinued FAQ rich results as of May 7, 2026, announced through a Search Central changelog entry. Google’s own notice states it directly: “FAQ rich results are no longer appearing in Google Search. We will be dropping the FAQ search appearance, rich result report, and support in the Rich results test in June 2026.” Search Engine Land and Search Engine Roundtable both covered this at the time. If your understanding of FAQ schema stopped at the 2023 restriction, this is the update you’re missing — it’s not a continuation of the old story, it’s a new one.

The 2023 change narrowed who could show FAQ rich results. The May 2026 change removed the feature entirely. Those are two different events, on two different timelines, and most FAQ-schema advice online still only accounts for the first one.

Do you need to remove the markup?

Google’s own guidance, consistent across both the 2023 and 2026 announcements: you can remove FAQ structured data if you want, but you don’t have to. Leaving it in place doesn’t harm your site. Other search engines may still process it for their own purposes, and Google has repeatedly said unused structured data doesn’t carry a penalty simply for existing.

So practically, removal is a cleanup task, not an urgent fix. If your FAQ schema is auto-generated by your SEO plugin from genuinely Q&A-shaped content, there’s little reason to touch it. If you added it manually specifically to chase the old rich-result appearance, and it’s now cluttering your templates for no visible benefit, that’s a reasonable thing to clean up whenever you’re next working in that area of the site.

Does FAQ schema still do anything for AI search?

This is the part with the least solid ground to stand on, and I want to be honest about that rather than pretend there’s a clear answer. Google has not documented FAQPage or HowTo schema as a signal used in AI Overviews or AI Mode citation. Some SEO commentary has pointed to Google’s own decision to drop the rich result as indirect evidence that the markup isn’t weighted as an AI-surface signal either — that’s a reasonable inference, not a confirmed fact.

On the other side, some SEO tool vendors claim FAQ schema correlates with higher citation rates in AI Overviews, ChatGPT, or Perplexity. I couldn’t verify these claims against independent, audited data — they trace back to SEO tool vendors with an obvious interest in selling schema-related features, and should be treated as unverified marketing claims rather than established fact.

What I’d actually do

• Don’t panic-remove FAQ markup. Google has said explicitly it’s harmless to leave.
• Don’t add new FAQ schema expecting a rich-result payoff. That mechanism is gone as of May 2026, full stop.
• Keep genuinely Q&A-formatted content Q&A-formatted for readers and for other search engines, independent of whether Google displays it specially — the content structure itself still has value beyond the schema markup.
• Be skeptical of any vendor claiming FAQ schema is now an “AI citation lever.” That claim isn’t confirmed by Google, and the same pattern of unverified schema promises played out — and was later tested and found lacking — for AI Overview citations generally.

The honest state of FAQ schema in late 2026: it’s a dead feature for Google’s own rich results, harmless to leave in place, not worth adding for new pages, and its relevance to AI search specifically remains genuinely unconfirmed rather than settled in either direction.