AI Visibility pillar / check faq-schema

FAQ markup and what it does today

Information only. Since August 2023 Google shows FAQ rich results only for well-known, authoritative government and health sites. FAQ markup still describes your questions in a machine-readable way, but do not expect FAQ rich results.

By Shimon Carroll, Founder, SEO for AI Agents · Last updated

What this check measures

Whether the page declares FAQPage, Question or QAPage markup, and whether it visibly has FAQs (an FAQ heading or several question headings).

Why it matters

Google's August 2023 post says FAQ rich results are shown only for well-known, authoritative government and health websites, and that structured data that is not used does not cause problems for Search. Google's AI features page says no special schema is needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. What helps readers and answer engines is the visible question and its answer.

How we score it

Never scored. The finding is informational in every state: it reports what markup we read, and it never lowers a pillar.

Confidence-flag rules

HIGH. Markup presence is read directly from the JSON-LD and microdata on the page.

Common mistakes

  • Adding FAQ markup to win FAQ rich results on a non-government, non-health site.
  • Marking up questions that are not on the page.
  • Writing answers in the markup that differ from the visible answer text.

How to fix it

Keep visible questions with direct answers. If you use FAQ markup, mirror the visible questions and answers exactly.

Primary sources

Changelog

  • · Copy updated with the exact wording of Google's August 2023 change, re-read on 2026-10-07. Whether marked-up questions are visible is now checked by structured-data-visible-match.
  • · No longer asks every page for FAQ markup; informational only.
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