Google removes FAQ rich results from Search

Google has stopped showing FAQ rich results in Search. The change took effect on 7 May 2026, according to a notice Google added to its own structured data documentation, and it closes out a phase-out that started in August 2023. The feature is gone from the results page; the schema itself is not gone from the web.

What Google actually said#

Google did not publish a blog post about the removal. The only public record is a notice added to the FAQ structured data documentation, later folded into the Search Central changelog: “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. To allow time for adjusting your API calls, support for the FAQ rich result in the Search Console API will be removed in August 2026.”

Three dates follow from that notice. FAQ rich results stopped appearing on 7 May 2026. The search appearance filter, the rich result report and Rich Results Test support go in June 2026. Search Console API support for the FAQ rich result type ends in August 2026, giving teams pulling that data a window to adjust their calls before it disappears.

A three-year phase-out#

This did not happen in one step. In August 2023, Google restricted FAQ rich results to well-known, authoritative government and health sites, cutting the feature for everyone else. The same period narrowed HowTo rich results to mobile only, before removing them entirely by September 2023. May 2026 appears to finish the job Google started then: the last sites still eligible for a FAQ rich result, the authoritative government and health properties, lose it too.

The 2026 removal came with no stated reason from Google beyond the documentation notice itself. The pattern is a feature that narrows in scope first and is then removed.

What to do with FAQPage now#

Google’s documentation is explicit that unused structured data does not cause problems for Search, and FAQPage is still a valid Schema.org type. There is no stated penalty for leaving the markup in place, only the loss of the Google feature it used to produce.

The timing has drawn attention because FAQ schema has appeared in some AI search advice as a way to make content easier for AI systems to parse. Google has not connected the removal to that trend, and whether FAQ schema helps AI search is a separate question from Google’s rich result support. Either way, keeping or removing the markup does not affect Google Search visibility.

Why we care#

A rich result disappearing is routine. What is worth tracking is the shape of the decision: Google narrowed FAQ eligibility for three years before cutting it entirely, gave no public explanation beyond a documentation notice, and left the underlying schema untouched. That is the pattern to watch for the next rich result on a restricted eligibility list.