FAQ schema: why it must match the page, and what it still does

For a few years, FAQ markup was the easiest way to take up more space in Google results: add FAQPage JSON-LD and your listing grew a list of questions. In August 2023 Google limited those rich results to well-known, authoritative government and health sites. Most advice about FAQ schema predates that change.

What FAQ markup does now

• It remains valid structured data that describes questions and answers on the page.
• It gives any system reading the page, including AI assistants, a clean question and answer structure.
• For most sites it no longer produces the expanded FAQ in Google results.

So the reason to keep it is not a rich result. It is that a good FAQ is useful to readers, and marking it up costs nothing when it comes from the same data.

The rule that has not changed

Every question and answer in the markup must be visible on the page.

Hidden FAQ markup, or markup with different wording from the page, breaks Google's structured data guidelines. The simple way to never break it: render the visible FAQ and the JSON-LD from one array. On this blog every post has a faq field, and both the page section and the FAQPage markup read it. They cannot disagree.

Writing FAQs that earn their place

• Questions people ask next, after reading the post, not the headline again.
• Answers of one to three sentences that stand on their own.
• Three good questions beat ten padded ones.
• Every answer must be supported by the body, so the post and the FAQ agree.

Those short, self-contained answers are also the form AI assistants quote most easily, which we discuss in how to get cited by AI assistants.

SEO Blog Writer writes posts this way: a visible FAQ on every post, generated alongside the structured data when it builds your blog, so the two never drift apart.