Do FAQ Rich Results Still Exist?

What happened, and when?

A feature was narrowed, then retired, then documented out of existence. Google's structured data documentation carried the notice plainly: “This feature will no longer appear in Google Search starting May 7, 2026.”

The sequence is worth recording because it is a clean example of platform dependency. FAQ rich results were widely used by publishers, then in August 2023 restricted to well-known authoritative government and health websites, which removed eligibility for essentially every commercial site at a stroke. The retirement in May 2026 closed it for the remaining few.

The deprecation notice was added on 8 May 2026, a day after the change took effect, and the FAQ rich result documentation was removed entirely on 15 June 2026.

So a markup investment that many sites made, and that a generation of SEO advice recommended, produced a display feature that no longer exists. Nothing was done wrong by the sites that implemented it; the feature was simply withdrawn.

The two-stage withdrawal is the part worth remembering. Restriction came first and looked survivable, since a handful of sites kept eligibility, and retirement followed nearly three years later. A feature narrowing is often the first move rather than the last.

Nothing about the sequence was hidden; it was simply easy to miss unless you were reading release notes.

Does the markup still do anything?

Not in Search, which was its point. A page carrying FAQPage structured data will no longer produce an expandable question-and-answer display in Google results, because the display no longer exists to be produced.

The vocabulary itself is unaffected. FAQPage remains a valid schema.org type, and structured data serves consumers other than Google's rich result pipeline — other search engines, aggregators, and any system that reads a page's markup to understand its structure.

On whether to remove it, Google's general position is that unused structured data does not cause problems. Markup for a feature that no longer runs is inert rather than harmful, so there is no urgency to strip it out.

The honest summary is that the effort was not wasted in the sense of having been wrong, and was wasted in the sense of having bought a benefit that has since been withdrawn. Those are different failures and only the second one happened.

There is a reasonable case for keeping it beyond inertia. The questions and answers are content, and structuring them declares to any reader or system that a page answers specific questions — which is the property that retrieval systems documented elsewhere in this series are searching for, whether or not Google renders a box.

The cost of leaving it is close to zero and the cost of removing it is an engineering ticket, which is why most sites will simply carry it indefinitely. That is a reasonable outcome rather than negligence.

What does this say about optimising for features?

That features are the least durable thing to build for, and that this is a repeating pattern rather than an anomaly.

The same documentation history shows HowTo rich results deprecated on mobile alongside the 2023 FAQ restriction. A platform that introduces a display feature can narrow it, restrict it to a category of site, or remove it, and none of those decisions involve the publishers who implemented it.

This connects to a theme running through this series. Google publishes eligibility conditions and withholds selection criteria; it declines to guarantee that correct structured data produces any feature at all, as examined in the report on schema markup. The FAQ retirement is that caution playing out: eligibility was real until the feature was not.

The durable investments are the ones that do not depend on a specific display surviving. Accurate content that answers real questions, on an indexable page, remains useful regardless of how any platform chooses to render it this year.

It also explains why so much SEO advice ages badly. Guidance written about a feature has a shelf life set by the feature, while guidance written about what readers need does not, and the two are indistinguishable at the moment of publication.

Why do so many pages still carry it?

Because removing markup is work with no visible payoff, and because the advice to add it was pervasive for years.

An enormous amount of published guidance still recommends FAQ schema for visibility, written before the retirement and not revised since. A company following current-looking advice can implement a feature that stopped existing months earlier, which is a reason to check the primary documentation rather than the commentary.

This report's own publisher is in the same position. Every report in this series emits FAQPage structured data, added when the format was designed and before the retirement, and it now produces no rich result in Google Search. It stays because the questions and answers remain useful to readers and to any system that reads the markup, not because it earns a display.

That is the accurate way to hold it: the structure is worth having for its own sake, and the search feature it was originally aimed at is gone.

The wider lesson for reading any SEO guidance is to check its date against the platform's own change log. A recommendation can be competent, widely repeated and obsolete at the same time, and only the primary documentation distinguishes those states.

What should a buyer take from this?

Scepticism about any placement or SEO proposal priced against a specific rich result.

A vendor offering FAQ rich results today is selling something that does not exist, which is checkable in a minute against Google's own documentation. That is a useful test of whether a proposal was written from primary sources or copied from older material.

More generally, treat platform display features as weather rather than climate. They appear, narrow and disappear on the platform's schedule, and any value bought through them is held at that schedule's mercy.

The durable things this series keeps arriving at are unglamorous by comparison: a page that says something specific and true, on a site that can be crawled, with a record you archived yourself. None of those were retired on 7 May 2026.

Ask what a proposal is measured against. Work priced against a feature dies with the feature; work priced against answering a question survives it, and the second is usually the same work described more honestly.

It is also a reminder to date your own documentation. Any internal playbook recommending a platform feature should carry the date it was checked, because the recommendation and its expiry are invisible to whoever reads it next.

What this means for anyone buying placement

Check the primary documentation before paying for any structured-data outcome. Google publishes its feature status openly and dates its changes, and the gap between that and prevailing advice can be a year or more.

Do not remove existing FAQ markup in a hurry. Google's position is that unused structured data does not cause problems, so the sensible treatment is to leave it and stop counting on it.

Ask what remains if the feature goes. A proposal whose entire value depends on one display surface has a single point of failure that its seller does not control.

Media Morpheus sells placement and search visibility work. Our own pages carry markup for a feature Google has since retired, which is a fair illustration of the point: the implementation was correct, the platform changed, and the only part that kept its value was the content underneath.

Methodology and limitations

This report is based on Google's structured data documentation for FAQPage, including the deprecation notice and its dating, together with the documented August 2023 restriction of the feature to authoritative government and health sites. Four limits apply. First, Google removed the FAQ rich result documentation on 15 June 2026, so the operative notice is quoted as it appeared before removal and cannot now be read at that location. Second, this report addresses Google Search; other search engines and consumers of structured data may treat FAQPage markup differently. Third, no data is reported on how many sites carried the markup or what traffic the feature generated, because no reliable published figure was located. Fourth, platform features change without notice and this describes the position at the date of publication.

Conclusion

FAQ rich results no longer exist. Google restricted them to government and health sites in August 2023, retired them from Search on 7 May 2026, and deleted the documentation on 15 June. The markup remains a valid schema.org type and, by Google's general position on unused structured data, is harmless to leave in place — it simply no longer buys anything. The useful lesson is about what to build for. A display feature is the platform's to withdraw, and publishers who implemented this one did nothing wrong except depend on it. This series' own reports still carry the markup, which is as good an illustration as any: the structure was worth having, and the feature it was aimed at is gone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

1. official Google Search Central. FAQPage structured data documentation, including the deprecation notice dated 8 May 2026.
2. official Google Search Central. Structured data general guidelines, cited for the eligibility-not-guarantee position.