Google ends FAQ rich results, phases out Search Console reporting by 2026

Google’s end to FAQ rich results is less a feature retirement than a warning shot for agencies that have leaned on schema for easy visibility. As of May 7, 2026, FAQ rich results no longer show in Search, and Google is phasing out related Search Console reporting, Rich Results Test support, and later in the year, FAQ support in the API.

The practical effect is immediate for sites that treated FAQ markup as a reliable traffic lever. Pages can keep the structured data in place, but Google no longer promises any special treatment in Search. That matters most for agencies managing clients whose content strategy depended on FAQ snippets to win more screen space, higher click-through rates, or a cleaner presence on crowded results pages.

The broader lesson is not that structured data is useless. Google’s guidance has long made the distinction clear: markup can make a page eligible for a rich result, but it does not guarantee one. Google also says a structured-data manual action affects rich-result eligibility, not ordinary web rankings. In other words, the code may still help search systems understand a page, but it is no longer a business case for visibility by itself.

This change did not come out of nowhere. In August 2023, Google sharply limited FAQ rich results to well-known, authoritative government and health websites, and said markup that was not being used would not hurt Search, but would also have no visible effect in Google Search. In June 2025, Google went further and said it would drop support for several structured data types because they were not commonly used in Search and no longer added significant value.

That history is why agencies should treat the May 2026 cutoff as a cleanup moment. Audit every client page that still carries FAQPage markup. Decide whether the markup serves any non-Google purpose, or whether the hours spent maintaining it would be better spent on content updates, internal linking, conversion paths, or brand demand work that still survives SERP redesigns.

Google’s own FAQPage documentation said the feature was only available for well-known, authoritative government-focused or health-focused websites, on desktop and mobile, in all countries and languages where Google Search is available. It also points practitioners toward Rich Results Test for Google-specific validation and Schema Markup Validator for generic schema checks. For agencies, the message is blunt: schema strategy needs to follow durable business goals, not a feature that can disappear with one update to Search.