FAQ rich results are gone. What to do with the markup

What exactly did Google change, and when?

Google’s FAQPage documentation states that as of 7 May 2026, FAQ rich results no longer appear in Google Search. The FAQ search appearance, the rich result report and support in the Rich Results Test were dropped in June 2026, and Search Console API support ends in August 2026.

There is no remaining eligibility for anyone. The earlier carve-out from August 2023, which had preserved FAQ rich results for well-known authoritative government and health sites, is superseded.

So the visible expanded question list under a result is finished, for every site.

What we read from that, and this part is our judgement rather than anything the sources state: nothing in those rows tells you to touch your site, so the only decision left is what you do with the questions themselves.

What does the removal not mean?

The removal took away a display feature, not the questions your buyers ask and not structured data as a whole. Three readings of it are wrong, and each one costs something: that FAQ content was a mistake, that the markup now has to come off the page, and that structured data stopped mattering.

It does not mean FAQ content was a mistake. The rich result was a display treatment; the content was answering questions people ask.

It does not mean you must strip the markup. Google’s own guidance is that you may remove FAQPage structured data or leave it in place, since other search engines may still process it.

It does not mean structured data stopped mattering. Other types are unaffected, and this was one appearance being retired rather than a change of direction.

What would we actually do with existing FAQ markup?

Leave it in place. With no Google display left to earn, removing FAQPage markup is developer time spent for no gain, and the work worth doing sits in the answers instead: check the questions are still the ones being asked, make each answer stand on its own, and pull anything commercially load-bearing out of the accordion.

Leave the markup unless you are cleaning up for another reason. Removing it costs developer time and buys nothing.

Keep the questions, and check they are still the questions being asked. An FAQ block written for a rich result tends to be written for the snippet rather than for a person, which shows.

Rewrite the answers to stand alone. The most useful property of a good answer now is that a model can lift it without ambiguity, and that means a complete sentence that makes sense on its own rather than a fragment that assumed the question was displayed above it.

Move anything load-bearing out of the accordion. Content a user has to click to reveal is content some crawlers and some readers never see, and if the answer matters commercially it belongs in the body.

Why does content built for a search feature keep dying with it?

Because the feature was never the thing that had value. This is the second time in three years that a display feature people optimised for has been withdrawn. The pattern is worth internalising: features come and go, and the answer underneath is what survives.

Content built for a rich result dies with the rich result. Content built to answer the question keeps working in the next surface, whatever it turns out to be.

“This is the second time in three years that a display feature people optimised for has been withdrawn.”