For years the FAQ page had one easy selling point: it put expandable questions directly underneath your own search result. Since 7 May 2026 that rich result no longer exists, for any website. If you built the page purely for it, you now have a page without a purpose, and you will probably let it go stale. That would be the wrong conclusion. Because while Google cleared the format away, the place where people ask their questions has shifted: well over half of all service journeys now begin somewhere other than with you, on a search engine, on YouTube or inside a chatbot. This piece sets out what exactly was switched off, what is untouched by it, and what an answer looks like when it has to work outside your own website.
What exactly did Google switch off?
What went away is the FAQ rich result, the expandable block of questions and answers that Google generated from the FAQ schema in a page's source. The withdrawal ran over three years in four steps. In August 2023 Google announced that the rich result would only be shown for well-known, authoritative government and health websites, and would no longer regularly appear for anyone else (Google Search Central, "Changes to HowTo and FAQ rich results", 8 August 2023). In September 2023 the documentation for the general case disappeared. On 8 May 2026 Google added a deprecation notice: the feature stopped appearing in Search on 7 May 2026. On 15 June 2026 the documentation was removed altogether (Google Search Central, documentation changelog, retrieved 26 August 2026).
In practice this means three things. First, markup already sitting in your source does no harm; Google has said repeatedly that unused structured data does not hurt Search. It simply earns nothing any more. Second, the Search Console report and the check in the Rich Results Test were dropped in June 2026, and support in the Search Console API ends this month. If you still have a dashboard pulling that value, expect a gap in it from now on. Third, and this is the real point: when you plan a new page, the rich result is no longer an argument. Not one bit of one.
Where do your customers ask their question first?
Not with you. Gartner surveyed 5,801 customers in January and February 2025 and arrived at a figure that resets the job of the FAQ page: 51 per cent of all customer service journeys now begin on third-party platforms, meaning Google, YouTube or an AI chat, with search engines the most common starting point. Among Gen Z it is 74 per cent. Only 22 per cent of respondents start, stay and resolve their issue entirely inside the company's own channels (Gartner press release, 23 July 2025).
This is not news about technology, it is news about sequence. The question gets asked before anyone opens your website, and it gets asked in someone else's words: not the name of your product, but a description of the problem. Your job therefore shifts from "having a page with the questions on it" to "having answers that hold together outside your own site structure". How much lands out there is not a disaster, by the way: respondents report a 62 per cent success rate when searching on platforms such as YouTube or Google. It is happening, just without you, if you are not there.
Why does self-service fail so often?
Because the content is missing, not the tool. A second Gartner survey, of 5,728 customers in December 2023, shows the gap plainly: 73 per cent use self-service at some point while resolving an issue, but only 14 per cent resolve it fully there. Even for issues respondents themselves describe as very simple, the figure is 36 per cent. The most common reason for failure is not a broken interface: in 43 per cent of cases customers simply could not find content relevant to their issue (Gartner press release, 19 August 2024).
That single number is the whole argument for an FAQ page, and it never had anything to do with Google. Four in ten people who wanted to sort it out on their own give up because the answer either does not exist or cannot be found. Then they write an email or pick up the phone, and the same question costs you time a second time. This is where the lever sits, and plenty of teams miss it while thinking about markup in the source.
How do you know which questions are actually being asked?
From the inbox, not from memory. Nielsen Norman Group reviewed 23 organisations for its guidance on frequently asked questions and derived 94 guidelines from them; the line that sticks is the shortest one: "People don't search for your solution, they search for their problem" (Susan Farrell, Nielsen Norman Group, 21 December 2014). Translated: your customers are not searching for the name of your service, they are searching for their difficulty. An FAQ page written from the supplier's point of view therefore answers questions nobody asked.
The method is unglamorous and costs nothing. For four weeks, collect every question that arrives by email, phone, chat or in a sales conversation into a single list, in the words the person used. Then count which question comes up how often. The top five are your work list; everything else waits. As a second free source, take the "People also ask" box in Google's results and the query report in Search Console: both show you phrasings you would never have chosen yourself. What decides the right wording in the end is search intent, not your in-house vocabulary.
Does the answer belong on the FAQ page or on the product page?
On the page where the question arises. That is the distinction most question pages fail: they become the dumping ground for anything that felt awkward elsewhere. If a question decides a purchase, the answer belongs where the purchase is decided, so on the pricing, product or booking page. If it only comes up after the purchase, it belongs in the help section. The FAQ page then collects what has no natural home and links in both directions. It is a junction, not a warehouse.
This order has a pleasant side effect: it stops you maintaining the same answer in three places and having three different versions of it live six months later. Anyone who has tidied up once also spots quickly which questions do not need an answer at all but a change to the offer. A fourth query about the same fee is rarely a copy problem. How to decide whether a topic deserves its own page or a passage on an existing one is something we set out in more detail using landing page versus home page.
How do you write an answer that also works off your own site?
By making every question-and-answer unit stand on its own. That is the single craft rule everything else follows from. The question sits as a heading, in the customer's words. The answer opens with the outcome in the first two sentences, and the reasoning comes after. No "as described above", no reference to a section an excerpt will not carry with it. Every figure carries a year and a source, every condition is spelled out. The reason is simple: search engines and AI answers lift passages, not pages. Anything that does not work without its context will certainly not work off your site. The connection to AI Overviews is the same as with a featured snippet: both quote sections.
Which brings an uncomfortable adjustment of expectations. Being cited is not the same as being visited. Pew Research Center analysed browsing data from 900 US adults in March 2025, around 68,900 Google searches: when an AI summary appeared, users clicked a search result on 8 per cent of visits, against 15 per cent without a summary, so nearly twice as often (Pew Research Center, 22 July 2025). Your answer therefore has to do its work inside the passage: name, service, condition, price range, next step. Take that seriously and you will write better answers than anyone still hoping for the click. There is more on this in our piece on being cited rather than clicked.
And the markup in the source? Schema markup stays important for products, reviews, events and organisations. The FAQ schema itself is still a valid schema.org type, and you do not have to rip it out anywhere. It is simply no longer a reason to build a page.
Three levers for the next fortnight
One: count for four weeks instead of guessing. One list, every incoming question in its original wording, then sorted by frequency. The top five are the job; the rest is busywork.
Two: write the answer where the question arises. Purchase-deciding questions on the offer page, post-purchase questions in the help section, the remainder on the FAQ page with links in both directions.
Three: make every answer readable on its own. Question as a heading in customer language, outcome in the first two sentences, figures with year and source, no back-references. If an answer does not hold up in isolation, it certainly will not hold up off your website.
If you would like your most common questions sorted once and written where they are actually being asked: we do this regularly with teams who have had that list sitting in the inbox for ages and have simply never counted it. 📋