FAQ Rich Results Are Gone. Keep the Schema.

In August 2023, Google removed a feature thousands of sites had built for. FAQ rich results, the expandable questions that appeared under a search listing, stopped showing for almost everyone. HowTo rich results vanished entirely. A lot of site owners responded by ripping the schema out of their pages.

That was the wrong lesson. Google removed the visual reward, not the markup, and it said so directly: the FAQPage and HowTo structured data stays valid and does not need removing. The reason to keep it changed shape. The stars went away, and the value moved to AI, where a clean question-and-answer pair is exactly what generative engines lift into an answer. Brass-SEO keeps FAQ schema on pages for that reason.

What Changed in August 2023
Why Sites Deleted Their FAQ Schema
Why the Markup Still Earns Its Place
What to Do With FAQ Schema Now
Frequently Asked Questions

What Changed in August 2023

Brass-SEO dates this shift precisely. In August 2023 Google removed HowTo rich results from search entirely and limited FAQ rich results to well-known, authoritative government and health sites, so most sites lost the expandable questions that used to sit under their listing.

Before the change, a page with FAQPage markup could earn a stack of clickable questions in the search result, and a HowTo page could show numbered steps. Both took up space and pushed competitors down the page. After the change, that real estate disappeared for the ordinary business site. Google's stated goal was a cleaner, less cluttered result. The practical effect was a feature many teams had invested in going dark almost overnight.

Why Sites Deleted Their FAQ Schema

Brass-SEO sees the same reaction over and over: teams read the change as retire the markup. Google said the opposite. The FAQPage and HowTo structured data remains valid and does not need removing, and only the visual rich result went away for most sites.

The instinct is understandable. You added schema to get a search feature, the feature is gone, so the schema looks like dead weight. There is also a real cost to leaving stale markup that no longer matches your page. The mistake is treating do I still get stars as the only question worth asking. The stars were one use of the markup. They were never the only one.

Why the Markup Still Earns Its Place

Brass-SEO keeps FAQ schema for a reason that grew as the rich result shrank. Question-and-answer markup hands an AI system a clean, self-contained pairing of a question and the answer to it, which is the exact shape generative engines pull into their responses.

Ask ChatGPT or an AI Overview a question, and it wants a passage that reads as a direct answer to that question. FAQPage markup labels precisely that: here is a question, here is its answer, machine-readable and unambiguous. The research on structured data and AI retrieval points the same way, and Brass-SEO's guide to schema markup for AI search covers which types carry weight now. Q&A is among the most-cited content shapes for large language models, because a question maps straight onto how people query them. The rich result was a bonus. The extraction value is the point.

What to Do With FAQ Schema Now

Brass-SEO's guidance is to keep it and write for extraction. A valid FAQPage block where each answer stands on its own as a factual sentence is worth more for AI citation than it ever was for a star in the blue links.

Three habits make the difference. Write each answer so it makes sense read alone, with the subject named rather than pointed at with this or it. Keep the markup true to the visible page, since Google requires FAQ content to appear on the page itself. And resist stuffing the FAQ with keyword bait, which Google's spam policies treat as manipulation. Done well, the same block that once earned a rich result now earns a citation. Brass-SEO's work on JSON-LD and entity pages shows how the structured layer connects to the rest of your AI visibility.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Google remove FAQ rich results completely?

Not completely. In August 2023 Google limited FAQ rich results to well-known, authoritative government and health sites. Most other sites no longer see the expandable questions in search, but the underlying FAQPage markup stays valid on the page.

Should I delete FAQPage schema from my pages?

No. Google confirmed the markup remains valid and does not need removing. It still helps AI systems extract self-contained answers from your page, and it costs nothing to keep in place. Deleting it removes a working AI-extraction signal to chase a rich result that is already gone.

Do HowTo rich results still appear?

No. Google removed HowTo rich results from search entirely in August 2023. The HowTo markup is still valid to keep, but it no longer produces a visual rich result on any site.

Does FAQ schema help with AI Overviews and ChatGPT?

Question-and-answer markup gives an AI system a clean question paired with a self-contained answer, which is the format generative engines most often lift into a response. Writing each FAQ answer as a standalone, factual sentence improves the odds it gets quoted.

Score Your FAQ Pages for AI

Keeping the schema is step one. Writing answers an AI engine will actually quote is step two. The Brass-SEO AI Citability button scores whether each page's answers stand on their own and read as citable facts, working from your Google Search Console and Google Analytics data, both required. The plan is $25 a month with a three-day free trial, and setup takes about two minutes. Start a three-day free trial and check your FAQ pages first.

Sources: Google Search Central — Changes to HowTo and FAQ rich results (August 2023) · Brass-SEO Research Index — Structured Data