Google Just Killed FAQ Schema (And Most SEOs Still Don’t Get It)

Google is deprecating one of the most widely preached schema types of all time. And this is a good example of why you need critical thinking in SEO. On this episode of the show, I'm going to share what's being deprecated, what this means, how can you figure out yourself what schema types are important, then where should you put most of your attention in SEO? That's what we got on this episode of the show. Google just shared this. This is from Google Search Central in their documentation. Upcoming deprecation. As of May 7th, 2026, 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. This is what this means. This is broken down by SEO Pub, but it's really simple. This is from now the tech SEO subreddit. And SEO pub, who's been on the show before, he said it doesn't mean much of anything. They had already dropped FAQ snippets last year or maybe the year before for sites that were not government sites or major health sites. It's really not a big deal. Then he followed up. He said, "This has nothing to do with having or not having an FAQ section." So, you're still using FAQ sections. What this is talking about is a feature that shows up in the search engine results page under a listing. It will sometimes show FAQ questions from that page right in the SER right there in the search engine results page. If you are not a government website or popular health site though, you are not eligible for these anyhow. So basically, if you're using proper schema markup in order to have your FAQs show in the Google results, it's not going to do anything anymore. But realistically, Google hadn't really been showing FAQ snippets for years now. But now they have officially dropped support for this. And you know, it seems like every couple of months, Google is dropping support for more schema types. Back in November, I shared a podcast about this article from Search Engine Roundtable. Google dropped support for more structured data types and search features. A ton of schema types were deprecated. And like I said, this is happening every couple of months. This is frequent. If you want to do SEO that moves results, it's so important to try to develop critical thinkings. And so this is how to use critical thinking to figure out yourself what schema types are important. Generally speaking, you want proper schema to help you get clicked in the search engine results pages. You have schema. You're getting a special feature in the SER like stars for example. Four and a half stars out of five. And this is helping people click on your results instead of other results. So when you are deciding what schema to use and how important it is, just do this very simple little thing. Check in the SERs for your target keywords if they are special non-normal SER features and then screenshot these features. Screenshot the SER and then send it to an LLM and just ask what is causing the SER feature. If you are seeing non-normal SER features, screenshot them, send to an LLM, ask what's causing the SER feature. Because the thing is, it might also not be caused by schema. Google is testing different appearances and features in the search engine results pages all the time, picking out language all the time and then using it in different creative ways in the SERs. The most important times to use schema, it's if other results for your target keyword are actually getting SER features by using schema. Then you need to do it to be competitive. I also want to call out I mentioned using chat GPT and sending a screenshot, but there's a risk of using chat GPT for just straight up SEO advice if you don't know much about SEO. If you are asking chat GPT for standard SEO advice like the top five most important schema types to use for SEO, it's going to recommend FAQ schema. I tried this myself. I tried this on the day that it was announced that FAQ schema was being dropped. And I tried this just now, several days later, and it still told me use FAQ schema. This is because it's not doing a search for a question this basic. ChachiPT is not actually doing research for for a question this basic. Lily Ray explained it pretty well in a post of hers. She said, "I wonder if Google dropping support for FAQ schema has anything to do with the influx of new articles, 168,000 in the screenshot she shares claiming that FAQ schema is critical for generative engine optimization. This guidance is spreading like rapid fire. There are so many SEO articles that say you need FAQ schema. Chat GPT has this in its training data. It's not bothering to do a web search. And do you need FAQ schema for geo for generative engine optimization for large language models? It is a super common piece of advice that you need schema for LLM, that you need FAQ schema for LLMs, all this. Episode 956 of this podcast, do LLMs actually use schema? The duck test that broke SEO? It shares Mark Williams Cook making up schema types that are not valid, just completely made up schema types. So, it is not valid schema, but LLM's still use it. And that's because schema is just seen as normal text. You didn't need the schema. You can just use normal text. So, what should you focus on instead? So much of search engine optimization is just based on relevance and authority. You want more relevant content to your target searches. You want more authority in the form of backlinks that pass referral traffic and rankings that don't result in pogo sticking. If you have rankings that don't result in people going back to the search results trying to find a better answer, that actually generates authority for you. You want content that satisfies search intent better, that satisfies it better, faster, and then it predicts what searchers might want next. This is a trick that you can use and it made an immediate difference for a company that I'm doing that I've talked about on this show before. I'll talk about that in a second. But the trick is before you write your SEO content, spend 5 to 10 minutes to answer these three questions. Who is searching your target keyword? What do they want? What are they looking to achieve? Just spend 5 to 10 minutes answering those questions. So, I'm funding this new company. Our method is find a niche where people don't want to vibe code their own products that also has bad SEO. And we found one. Our marketing strategy is SEO. The operator who is doing this, he doesn't have much SEO experience. A little little bit, but not much. And so I told him to answer those questions and to actually write them out and to answer them. And he didn't do it. He didn't do it. And what happened was he picked a keyword that was not appropriate for our product. He basically took the questions, gave them to chat GPT, spent a few minutes just having Chat GPT answer them, doing a back and forth with Chat GPT, but not actually taking the time to think about these questions himself. And then he wrote the content for the keyword. And then when I reviewed it, after a couple minutes review, it was very clear that this keyword was about something that our product will not actually satisfy. People searching this keyword do not want our product. It was not a good keyword to target. And I'm not going to lie, I was kind of angry cuz I said, "Actually, write down answers to these questions." And he said, "Okay, okay. I'm sorry. You're right. I'm going to do it right this time." So he picked a new keyword. Then he wrote down answers to those three questions, detailed answers. Spent 5 to 10 minutes just thinking deeply about who was searching the target keyword. What do they want? What are they looking to achieve? He wrote the SEO content. We reviewed it this morning and it was great. I made so few changes. And then a lot of changes that I suggested, I actually realized his intuition was better because he took the time to think about what the searcher wanted where I was just looking at at it at a glance. He picked a great appropriate keyword and made great content and we barely spent any time on the review. So, the things that matter again, more relevance to your target search terms, more authority, content that satisfies search intent better, not FAQ schema and other pieces of schema that aren't even going to lead to special features in the SERs. This is episode 141 of the Edward Show. This is my daily search engine optimization podcast. 1,041 days in a row doing this show without missing a single day. If you want to save years learning search engine optimization that converts, focusing on things that matter, not wasting time and effort on things that don't drive results. If you want to save years learning how to do SEO that gets customers, users, warm leads calling you up, this is my SEO course at compactkeywords.com. I spent a year trying to make the best SEO course ever. And I'm not going to lie, I'm a little bit biased, but I think I succeeded. I think I succeeded. People are consistently getting incredible results with the course. Results that are blowing my mind and they share them. They share them on the landing page of compacters.com in the testimonials. Here's one I love from Omar Abu Shabban. I wholeheartedly recommend compact keywords by Edward Sterm. Uh I was hesitant cuz I came from e-commerce and I was like, well, what can this really do? 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So it's been about I'd say I've been in 5 weeks or 6 weeks right now gaining momentum. uh hit a couple roadblocks and again Edward's been super helpful that and then there's these weekly breakdowns that are phenomenal. So I'm just looking forward to uh continuing. Uh thanks again Edward. Thank you Omar for that. Look wasting time doing SEO that does not lead to results is very costly. You are paying for your time. You are paying for your effort which could be spent on better things. And compact keywords is about what will get results. How to find keywords where people want to convert. How to target these keywords. How to build links. How to do things in a safe way, not a spammy way. How to structure your site for pages with high intent and so much more. That is at I hope you will check it out. That's everything for the show. If you watch this on YouTube, thank you so much for watching. 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