What Is FAQPage Schema?

How FAQPage Schema Works

FAQPage is a Schema.org type that tells a search engine, “this page is a set of frequently asked questions and their answers.” You express it as JSON-LD in the page’s markup. The FAQPage object holds a mainEntity array, and each element of that array is a Question entity with a name (the question text) and a single acceptedAnswer, itself an Answer entity whose text holds the answer. The answer text may contain a limited set of HTML elements such as links and simple formatting.

The critical constraint is authenticity. Google’s guidance has always been that FAQPage markup is for content where the questions and answers are written by the site and visible to users on the page — not a search box, not a forum where users submit competing answers, and not invented questions bolted on purely to earn markup. Content that does not match the on-page experience risks being treated as spammy structured data.

For most of its life, correct FAQPage markup earned an eye-catching payoff: the FAQ rich result, an expandable list of questions that dropped down directly under the page’s listing in Google Search, visibly enlarging the result. That payoff is what changed.

The FAQ Rich Result Deprecation

The FAQ rich result no longer exists in Google Search. According to Google’s own documentation changelog, the feature stopped appearing in search results on May 7, 2026, and a deprecation note was added to the FAQ structured-data documentation on May 8, 2026. Google removed the feature’s dedicated documentation on June 15, 2026, and the reporting and testing tools — Search Console’s rich-result reporting and the Rich Results Test — were wound down over the same period.

This was not sudden. In September 2023, Google first restricted the FAQ rich result to “well-known, authoritative government and health websites,” stripping eligibility from the vast majority of sites that had relied on it. The May 2026 change removed even that narrowed eligibility, retiring the feature entirely.

What survives is the vocabulary. FAQPage remains a valid Schema.org type, and Google has said the markup can stay on a page without causing problems. It is still machine-readable, so it can still help AI answer systems and entity graphs understand a page’s Q&A content — it simply no longer triggers a visual SERP enhancement.

Example of FAQPage Schema

The most instructive worked example is the deprecation itself, because it is precisely dated and documented on Google’s own site. Before May 2026, a page marked up with a FAQPage object — a mainEntity array of Question items, each resolving to one acceptedAnswer — could, if eligible, render the expandable FAQ dropdown beneath its search listing. A cooking site’s “How do I store fresh basil?” question, for instance, could appear as a click-to-expand row directly in the results.

After May 7, 2026, that identical, still-valid markup renders nothing extra. The listing shows the normal title and description; the dropdown is gone. Nothing about the JSON-LD needs to be wrong for the visual result to vanish — the feature that consumed it was switched off. That is the concrete lesson: the deprecation decoupled “valid FAQPage markup” from “richer search appearance.” The two used to travel together, and as of mid-2026 they no longer do. The pages that still benefit from FAQ content are the ones where the questions and answers help a real reader, not the ones counting on a rich result that Google has retired.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

FAQPage is the Schema.org type for describing a page of questions and answers as structured data. For years it powered Google’s expandable FAQ dropdown, but that feature was deprecated on May 7, 2026, ending a restriction that had already narrowed it to government and health sites since 2023. The markup itself lives on as valid, machine-readable annotation — it just no longer buys you a richer search listing, so keep it only where it honestly describes real Q&A content.